Grandview Palace: A Wet Hallway Is Not Proof, Third DCA Tells Condo Associations Suing Owners Over Leaks

Water leaks are among the most common sources of friction between condominium associations and unit owners, and the bill for drywall, carpet and mold remediation often becomes a lawsuit. On July 29, 2026, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal affirmed a directed verdict against a condominium association that sued an owner for leak damage but could not prove where the water came from ¹. For boards, managers and association counsel deciding whether to pursue an owner for repair costs, the opinion is a practical guide to what proof a jury needs to see.

The case

The Grandview Palace is a high-rise condominium with more than 500 units in North Bay Village ¹. Its declaration makes the association responsible for maintaining the common elements and makes each owner responsible for damage to the common elements caused by the owner, family, guests or tenants ¹. The association sued owner Tracey Judge for breach of the declaration and unjust enrichment, alleging that leaks from his washing machine and water heater caused damage ¹. Mr. Judge denied it and asserted that the association had failed to maintain the common elements ¹.

At trial, the association called two witnesses: its property manager, testifying as corporate representative, and Mr. Judge ¹. The manager described reports of water in the hallway and in the unit below, and said he saw a soaking wet carpet near the water heater and water at the heater’s drip pan after the association opened the hallway wall ¹. On cross-examination, he conceded that the association never hired a leak detection company, that his photographs showed a wet hallway rather than a leaking appliance, and that the building has common element pipes running through its walls ¹. Before trial, the court had barred the representative from proving causation through inadmissible hearsay ¹.

Mr. Judge testified that his water heater and washer had never leaked since he bought the unit in 2015, and that he had watched the association open walls on numerous floors to address leaks in common element pipes ¹. The trial court directed a verdict for him, observing that, as a general rule in Florida, technical questions like the source of a building leak call for expert testimony ¹.

Why the association lost

The Third District applied the rule against stacking inferences. A fact may be proved by circumstantial evidence, but a party cannot build a second inference on the first unless the first is established to the exclusion of all other reasonable inferences ¹. To win, the association needed a jury to infer that the water heater was the source, then that Mr. Judge failed to maintain it, then that the failure caused the damage, which the court called “a bridge too far” ¹. Because it was equally reasonable to infer the water came from the common element pipes, the first inference failed ¹. In the court’s words, “Because the Association failed to directly prove causation or rule out the common element pipes as the source of the leak, no proper view of the evidence can sustain a verdict in its favor” ¹.

The same court reached a mirror-image result five weeks earlier. In Vera v. Parkwood Condominium Association, a unit owner who slipped on wastewater in her bathroom lost on summary judgment because no witness knew whether the blockage was in her unit’s pipes or the association’s sanitary stack ². She had to show it was more likely than not that the problem was in the association’s pipes ².

What boards and owners can take from it

Read together, the two decisions mean that whoever brings a leak claim, association or owner, must locate the source ¹². A board considering a chargeback or lawsuit should know before filing whether it has a leak detection report, a plumber or engineer who can testify, and documents that fit a hearsay exception ¹. Without that, the case may not survive the close of the association’s own evidence.

Leak disputes also have a short list of real issues: source, maintenance responsibility under the declaration, and the cost of repair. When causation is uncertain for both sides, an early exchange of the plumbing evidence and a negotiated allocation of costs often makes more sense than a trial that turns on an expert neither side has hired.

Tony Roca is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator who mediates condominium and HOA disputes by Zoom statewide. Associations, owners and counsel can book a mediation online.