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Through the years Florida’s community associations have relied upon the court decisions that had routinely agreed that the provisions of Florida Statutes that expressly authorize an association to entitlement to an injunction (i.e., a judicial order requiring a person to take action) superseded the common law standard of the requirement that there be no adequate remedy at law before a party could seek an injunction. In other words, an association could pursue injunctive relief and seek a court order to force an owner to wash their dirty roof even if the governing documents also permitted the association to enter upon the lot and cure the maintenance violation by cleaning the roof (this remedy is often called “self-help”).
However, due to rulings from both the 2nd District Court of Appeals in April 2022 and now the 6th District Court of Appeals in August 2023, that may no longer be the case. As you may recall, the April 2022 appellate case requiring a community association to first exhaust its permissive right to use “self-help” and cure an owner violation of the covenants before seeking an injunction was addressed…