Owner vs Owner violation enforcement

I see and hear all the time that individual homeowners can enforce the governing documents themselves as a private action even if the HOA itself does not. That's written in the Florida HOA (and condo) statute explicitly. Also, our CC&Rs spell it out explicitly, too.

What I haven't seen are accounts of where such enforcement has actually happened. Does anyone have any knowledge of such ownver vs. owner violation enforcement activity?

When I was on our board, an owner went into mediation with another owner for noxious odors and nuisance behavior due to the lower floor owners' balcony smoking that bothered the residents in the floor above. About 8 years ago.

I don't recall the details, but the upper's action was to get the board to tell the lowers to smoke inside. The HOA attorney went back & forth between us (the board) the complainer's room and the smokers' room. They each spoke to the mediator. The upper also name u in and spoke with us for a few minutes. The mediator finally after about 3 hours told us via our GC to instruct the smokers to smoke in the unit or outside on the exterior of the building on the ground floor level. I believe their was a fine schedule involved. We complied and so did the smokers.

I don't remember who paid the mediator. I guess the HOA paid the attorney. I believe the procedure is at Davis-stirling.com. I believe it's a required first step that must be taken before a neighbor sues the HOA & the neighbor.. I'm not going to look it up.

If I'm off on some details, It appears that Richard won't correct me as he's left the building.

Agree that it would be very rare.

When we receive a complaint by owner A against owner B, we notify B that we received a complaint.
We don't tell B who complained.
We don't tell A if the BOD took any action against B.

We can have a long-standing complaint that doesn't get resolved. The complaining owner might think that the BOD hasn't taken any action, even though it has. The only way to find out would be to sue, and we've never had an incident where that happened.

There was a case in Iowa where one condo owner sued another, because a balcony had been built in violation of the documents (too large). The balcony was built six years before the lawsuit.

An appeals court found that a condo declaration should be interpreted in the nature of real estate covenants, which has a five year statute of limitations, and not under general contract law, which has a ten-year statute of limitations. So the plaintiff owner lost and the balcony stayed.

Business contracts and real estate covenants are different. On this forum, we sometimes hear the advice to get a contract lawyer not a real estate lawyer, but in this case the law for real estate won out. If an HOA lawyer was not available, I might hire an experienced real estate lawyer over a contract lawyer.

Hi Jeff
If your post is in response to my statement about a mediation contract, let me clarify.
In mediation, the parties come to an agreement. That agreement is whatever the parties agree to. And when 2 parties agree to something - they form a contract. If later there's a dispute about the contract, it will usually be won or lost under contract law rather than RE law.

In your example, you referenced a judicial decision. That's different. The judge determined which laws applied. In mediation, there is no judge. It's up to the individuals to come to an agreement (contract) or not.

Thanks, JeffT2, that is interesting and just the kind of thing I was asking about.