Court Opinion

ID: 9716507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:42:20.66301+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:46.167127
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting). It is not possible to appreciate the “gist” of this action without focusing in some detail on the complaint, little of which is exposed by the court’s opinion. The complaint consists of a brief preliminary statement followed by six counts. In the preliminary statement, the plaintiff *487states that the action is for injunctive and declaratory relief brought by a condominium trust to “set aside and void” a certain lease of indoor parking spaces and amendments thereto “entered into by the creator of the condominium trust” under terms described as “unconscionable.”
Count One alleges that “[b]ut for the [defendants’ wrongful actions, these parking spaces would be the property” (emphasis added) of the condominium trust, that the defendant David Zussman “undertook a fiduciary responsibility to said [tjrust and to its beneficiaries,” and that the defendant Selma Zussman “undertook a fiduciary responsibility” to the condominium trust. Count One further states that the lease of the parking spaces and the master deed creating the condominium trust were entered into and recorded simultaneously, that the “effect of [the] lease was to take twelve parking spaces which should have been included within the common area of the [condominium [t]rust and alienate them to a stranger . . . contrary to the rights and best interests of the . . . [t]rust” (emphasis added), that the lease “was made between related persons for their own interests and not the interests of the [c]ondominium [tjrust” and “was not negotiated at arms’ length,” and that “[t]he lease is an inequitable, unfair and improper conveyance of the rights of the Condominium [t]rust as well as an entirely unconscionable burden upon it.” “Wherefore,” says Count One, the plaintiff seeks relief in the form of a judgment “cancelling the lease” and “declaring the lease ... to be void.”
Count Two “incorporates and restates all of the allegations set out in Count One,” and then makes the following conclusory assertions of law: the master deed creating the condominium trust “causes all parking spaces within the building comprising the locus of said trust to be common area property of the Trust”; the lease “creates a fee simple ownership in the lessees”; and “[b]ecause the lease purports to deed out property which is part of the common areas of the condominium trust property to a party who is not a unit owner in the condominium, said lease is null and void under the terms and provisions of G. L. c. 183A, § 5 (c).” The prayers for relief in Count Two are identical to those in Count One.
*488Count Three seeks reformation of the lease, and the remaining counts seek damages and an accounting. All counts incorporated by reference the facts set forth in Count One together with allegations bearing on damages.
It may be that one of the plaintiff’s claims, set forth in Count Two, is that, independent of any violation of fiduciary duty, the defendants violated G. L. c. 183A, § 5 (c) (1986 ed.). Section 5 (c) provides: “The common áreas and facilities shall remain undivided and no unit owner or any other person shall bring any action for partition or division of any part thereof, except as provided in sections seventeen, eighteen and nineteen. Any covenant or provision to the contrary shall be null and void.” The court is wrong, however, when it asserts that “[t]he essence of the plaintiff’s claim is a violation of G. L. c. 183A, § 5 (c) (1986 ed.)” (emphasis added), and that “[although there are also allegations of breach of fiduciary obligations, the major aspect of the action concerns an interest in land.” Mention of c. 183A, § 5 (c), is made only in Count Two. It is clear from the language of the complaint that the “gist” of the action is at least as much a claim that the Zussmans violated their fiduciary duties to the plaintiff by subjecting what would become the common area of the condominium to an unconscionable lease for their own benefit as it is a claim under c. 183A, § 5 (c).
That the plaintiff makes a claim, the gist of which is breach of fiduciary duty, is not contraindicated by the fact that the relief the plaintiff seeks is the setting aside or reforming of the parking space lease. The gist of the claim is not determined by the relief sought but rather by the wrong asserted. Nantucket v. Beinecke, 379 Mass. 345, 349 (1979). In that case, the plaintiff town sought a declaration that a certain deed to the defendant was voidable because title to the land which was the subject of the deed had initially been transferred in violation of the Conflict of Interest Law, G. L. c. 268A (1986 ed.). The town also sought an order requiring reconveyance of the land to the town. The town argued that, if any statute of limitations applied to its action, it was G. L. c. 260, § 31, governing actions by the Commonwealth for the recovery of land.
*489In Nantucket, this court held the short “tort statute of limitations is applicable to the variety of types of actions possible under G. L. c. 268A, § 21, whether land was involved or not.” We concluded that “the essence of an action under the statute is breach of official duty, and the fact that the plaintiff seeks to recover land as opposed to money or some specific chattel is only of subsidiary importance.” Id. at 349. We supported that statement with a footnote as follows: “Compare this situation to a suit to set aside a conveyance of land for fraud. The problem of whether to apply the statute of limitations for fraud or the statute of limitations for recovery of land in such a situation is analyzed in Annot., 118 A.L.R. 200 (1939): ‘[I]n the majority of jurisdictions wherein the question has arisen, it has been held that, within the meaning of limitation statutes as ordinarily worded, a suit brought by one not in possession of land to obtain a decree setting aside a deed thereof as having been procured by fraud is one for relief on the ground of fraud, rather than an action for the recovery of real property. ’ ” Id. at 349 n.5. No principled distinction can be made between the claim in Nantucket that the deed should be set aside because it resulted from a breach of official duty and the claim here that the lease should be set aside or reformed because it resulted from a breach of fiduciary duty.
If the plaintiff’s claim under G. L. c. 183A, § 5 (c), is independent of the claims of breach of fiduciary duty, so that it merits separate consideration, nevertheless the breach of fiduciary duty claims must be dealt with. Yet, the court has neither struck the breach of fiduciary duty claims nor has it declared that the plaintiff’s claims under Counts One, Three, Four, Five, and Six are time-barred. The court should declare that those claims are time-barred because, as claims essentially asserting violation of fiduciary duty as the wrong entitling the plaintiff to relief, they are contract claims governed by the six-year period of limitations provided by G. L. c. 260, § 2. Brodeur v. American Rexoil Heating Fuel Co., 13 Mass. App. Ct. 939, 940 (1982). The court, at the very least, should declare that the only claim now open is the claim that the lease and its amendments are void as unlawful attempts to divide the *490“common areas and facilities” of a condominium. G. L. c. 183A, § 5 (c).
In my view, however, the defendants are not only entitled to summary judgment with respect to the counts other than Count Two, but they are entitled to summary judgment as to that count as well. It is highly doubtful that an action to have a lease declared void under G. L. c. 183A, § 5 (c), may properly be considered an “action for the recovery of land” within the meaning of G. L. c. 260, § 21. Heretofore in our case law the application of that statute has been limited to actions by persons alleging an immediate right of possession against others asserting adverse possession. No claim is made in this case that the defendants are in possession of any portion of the condominium property.
Of greater importance, however, is that it is clear from the pleadings and the materials available to the judge for summary judgment purposes that the plaintiff’s claim, in Count Two, viewed substantively, is without merit. As the court states, the lease and the master deed were recorded at 9:56 a.m. on June 16, 1977. Ante at 481 n.4. The master deed states that it is subject to the lease. It is abundantly clear that the interest transferred to David Zussman by the lease executed by Selma Zussman, who was never a condominium unit owner or a trustee of the condominium trust, never was part of the condominium trust property. The common areas and facilities were subject to the lease (and to implied rights of ingress and egress) before and at the time of the trust’s inception. “It can make no difference that the [lease and master deed] were all entered of record at the same moment. The law arranges acts performed, or things done, in one day, and relative to the same subject matter, so as to render them conformable to the intention of the parties.” Clark v. Brown, 3 Allen 509, 511 (1862). See Harding v. Broadway Nat’l Bank, 294 Mass. 13, 19-20(1936). Thus, the lease, with the right of access to and egress from the leased parking spaces implied therein, does not represent even an attempted division of the condominium’s common areas and facilities. Surely, too, it is not an “action for partition or division,” nor is it a “covenant or provision” therefor to which c. 183A, § 5 (c), is addressed.
*491While it may be that the plaintiff’s claim based on breach of fiduciary duty has substantive merit, that claim is time-barred. The plaintiff has no other claim that raises a substantial question of material fact. The defendants are entitled to summary judgment. I would affirm the judgment below.