Originally posted on November 19, 2012 by Ansley

In Richland Horizontal Prop. Regime Homeowners Ass’n, Inc. v. Sky Green Holdings, Inc., the Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s ruling that an arbitration clause on a master deed was unenforceable. In this case, a developer created a horizontal property regime by master deed. The master deed included  a cover page and then a second page where the arbitration provision was found. The developer later created a supplemental master deed, also including an arbitration provision, to add a new unit to the existing regime and reduce the proportionate share of common area ownership held by the original unit owners. The original unit owners filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment that the supplemental master deed violated the original master deed. The developer moved to compel arbitration, which motion was denied.

The court held that the arbitration clause failed to comply with the Uniform Arbitration Act which provides in § 15-48-10(a): “Notice that a contract is subject to arbitration pursuant to this chapter shall be typed in underlined capital letters, or rubber stamped prominently, on the first page of the contract and unless such notice is displayed thereon the contract shall not be subject to arbitration.”

The developer argued that the cover page of the master deed should not be included because the second page contains the following statement: “This is the first page of the Master Deed for The Richland Horizontal Property Regime. In the event other pages including, but not limited to cover pages, indexes, or tables of contents are placed in front of this page, those pages shall not be deemed to be the first page. This page and only this page shall be deemed the first page of the Master Deed for all legal purposes.

The court strictly construed the language of the statute and held that the “first page of the contract” meant  “preceding all others.” Since the cover page preceded the other pages in the master deed and it did not contain an arbitration provision, the court held that arbitration was not required.

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