HOAs Are Not Law Enforcement
Steve Tinnelly, Esq. of Tinnelly Law Group
In Woolard v. Regent Real Estate Services, Inc. (2024) 107
Cal.App.5th 783, the California Court of Appeal
delivered
important clarity on the duties that an HOA and its management have in addressing an increasingly common scenario: neighbor- to-neighbor disputes.
The case stemmed from a December 2019 physical
altercation between two sets of neighbors living at the Greenhouse Condominiums. What started as an argument between these couples escalated into punching and kicking, then to assault with a fl ashlight, and then a stabbing. Plaintiffs Eric Smith and Stacy Thorne sued their neighbors, Eric Woolard and Breonna Hall, for assault and other torts stemming from the violent incident. Woolard and Hall, in turn, fi led a cross- complaint against Regent Real Estate Services, Inc. (the community management company) and Greenhouse Community Association (the HOA).
Woolard and Hall alleged that the fi ght was the culmination of long-standing “harassment” by other residents and claimed that the HOA and the management company failed to adequately respond to their complaints and, therefore, allowed the situation to escalate. Their cross-complaint asserted multiple causes of action, but by the time of summary judgment, the only claim at issue was negligence on the part of the HOA and its management company. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the HOA and the management company, concluding that neither owed a duty to intervene in the neighbor dispute or prevent the physical altercation and, therefore, could not be liable for negligence. Woolard and Hall then appealed.
The Court of Appeal began with the well-established summary judgment standard: a defendant may prevail by showing that an essential element of the plaintiff’s cause of action cannot be established as a matter of law. Duty is one such essential element of a negligence cause of action. Accordingly, without a recognized duty that was breached, there can be no negligence claim regardless of how foreseeable the alleged harm may be.
On appeal, Woolard and Hall acknowledged that the HOA or the management company did not have a duty to intervene in the dispute or call the police. Yet they failed to identify any alternative duty whatsoever that could support liability. Instead, the crux of their argument relied heavily on general statements about the foreseeability of harm. In other words, the essence of Woolard and Hall’s argument was that the HOA and its management company knew things were bad between the neighbors and could get out of hand, so they should have done something about it.
Thankfully, the Court of Appeal rejected this argument, not only because foreseeability alone is insuffi cient to create a duty under California law, but because of the policy considerations that weigh heavily against imposing such a duty:
…there is simply no law to support Woolard and Hall’s contentions that [the manager] and [the HOA] had some unspecifi ed duty to do something to prevent what turned into an allegedly violent dispute. Imposing a duty on homeowners associations or their managing agents to intervene and attempt to resolve disputes between homeowners (or their tenants) would place an untenable burden on these entities. (Woolard, at 793.)
16 July |August 2026
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