Court Opinion

ID: 9582509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:28:06.902576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:53.898862
License: Public Domain

Judge Eagles
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from Part II of the majority opinion which reverses summary judgment for the plaintiff based on interpretation of Article III, paragraph (a) of the Supplemental Declaration language.
The critical error in the majority opinion lies in its erroneous conclusion that the language quoted is ambiguous:
(a) With the exception of First Flight Builders, Inc., its successors and assigns, with respect to Dwelling Units and Unit Weeks remaining unsold, each Time Share Owner shall pay, in addition to assessments for maintenance and improvements to the Common Area, a prorata share ... of all other costs incurred by the Management Firm and the Association in the maintenance, upkeep and operation of all Dwelling Units Committed to Time *369Share Ownership.. . . First Flight Builders, Inc. shall be responsible for actual operating expenses in excess of the collections of said assessments to the extent that said excess would be otherwise payable for Unit Weeks then remaining unsold.
The majority finds the language ambiguous and accepts the contention that if the developer now owns the units, the units necessarily must be within the group of units and unit weeks described in the Supplemental Declaration as “remaining unsold,” even though the units already have been sold by the defendant developer but, for whatever reason, have since been reacquired. To fully accept this specious logic, one must conclude that (1) all units and unit weeks owned now (whether once sold and reacquired or not) are available for sale, and (2) the word “remaining” in “remaining unsold” means nothing at all. Here the language “dwelling units and unit weeks remaining unsold” necessarily means units and unit weeks held by the developer which have not yet been sold and therefore remain in the developer’s inventory of units and time share weeks available to be sold. No other meaning is even remotely likely.
Finally, if the developers who drafted the Supplemental Declaration intended, as defendant argues now, to include units and unit weeks once sold and subsequently reacquired, the appropriate all encompassing language would have been units and unit weeks “owned by the developer,” not those “remaining unsold.”
I vote to affirm the summary judgment except as barred by the statute of limitations.