Case ID: so2d_580/html/0654-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM. GRIFFIN, Judge,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

CENTRUST SAVINGS BANK, et al., Appellants, v. SPRINGS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION, INC., etc., Appellee.
    Nos. 89-1330, 89-1773.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
    May 9, 1991.
    Rehearing Denied June 12, 1991.
    
      Karen Meyer Buesing and Phyllis J. Towzey of Rudnick & Wolfe, Tampa, for appellants.
    James Patrick Curry of Curry, Taylor & Carls, Orlando, for appellee.
   PER CURIAM.

The judgment of the lower tribunal that appellants are liable for assessments by the Springs Community Association, Inc. on unbuilt units is affirmed. However, we reverse the trial court’s assessment of interest on the unpaid assessments at the rate of 18 percent per annum simple interest. By the twentieth amendment to the Master Declaration of the Association, enacted on August 26, 1983:

If the assessment is not paid within thirty (30) days after the delinquency date, the assessment shall bear interest from the date of delinquency compounded at the rate of eighteen percent (18%) per annum....

The law is clear that, where a creditor purports to create a contractual right to charge a rate of interest higher than the equivalent of 18 percent per annum simple interest on any obligation, the penalty is forfeiture of the “entire interest so charged, or contracted to be charged or reserved, and only the actual principal sum of such usurious contract can be en-forced_” The trial court had no authority to award 18 percent simple interest.

AFFIRMED in part; REVERSED in part and REMANDED for entry of amended final judgment consistent with this opinion.

COWART, J., and ORFINGER, M., Associate Judge, concur.

GRIFFIN, J., concurs, and concurs specially with opinion.

GRIFFIN, Judge,

concurring specially.

While reviewing the difficult legal problems presented by this rather complex case, I have found myself nagged by one of those “what is wrong with this picture” feelings. The Springs Community Association members seek to have this court affirm the decision of the lower tribunal that the members have no vested voting rights in the two issues (special assessments and changes in the maximum and basis of assessments) that are most likely to significantly affect their property interests and which would seem to be most dear to preserve. Instead, in order to obtain a specific economic advantage from one of its members, the Association staunchly argues here, as it did below, that all the members’ rights as set forth in the Declaration, Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws of the Association, including their right to vote on special assessments or the basis and maximum of assessments, are, in perpetuity, subject to change (or extinction) at any time by a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors of the Association. Not finding any adequate basis in this record to overturn the findings and conclusions of the trial court concerning the meaning of the Master Declaration or the effect on appellants of the 1979 and 1986 amendments, I have voted to affirm the trial court. I do wonder, however, whether success in this litigation is worth the cost to the members. 
      
      . Appellants have also raised criminal usury, although this defense to the payment of the assessment was not pleaded. We have concluded that the appellant’s claim for criminal usury is procedurally defective as well as both legally and factually inapplicable in the present case.