Merrick Avenue Management, LLC v. Troon Village Association: Arizona HOA Superior Court Case Guide - Arizona HOA Transparency ProjectArizona HOA Transparency Project

Common Areas & Negligence | CC&R-Based Duty | CV2023-008406

In this Maricopa County Superior Court case, homeowners in a gated Scottsdale community — and a visitor who was shot in their driveway — alleged that homeowners associations, board members, and property companies were negligent because the community’s entrance gate was inoperative and left open. The court held that a recorded declaration’s allocation of common-area maintenance to an association creates a negligence duty running to owners and even their invitees, but granted the moving association and individual defendants summary judgment because the undisputed security-camera evidence would not let a jury reasonably infer that the shooter entered through the gate.

Last updated July 1, 2026. Case: Merrick Avenue Management, LLC v. Troon Village Association, et al., Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2023-008406 (consolidated with CV2023-012338).

Download summary-judgment ruling

Scope note: This page covers Merrick Avenue Management, LLC v. Troon Village Association, et al. (Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2023-008406, consolidated with CV2023-012338) as a public Arizona superior-court HOA case guide. It is built from the court’s own filed minute entries, including the September 18 and October 12, 2023 rulings on motions to dismiss and the April 30, 2025 under-advisement ruling granting summary judgment; the complete set of collected minute entries is available in the source-document index below. Currency caveat: the collected minute entries run through June 19, 2025, when the case was still active — the April 2025 summary-judgment ruling resolved the claims against Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and the individual defendants only, Amcor’s own summary-judgment motion had been noted but not decided, claims involving Troon Village Association and Cornerstone Properties, Inc. remained, and default judgments against two consolidated defendants had just been entered. Later docket activity may not be reflected here. Superior-court rulings bind only the parties and are not precedent. This page is educational and is not legal advice.

The takeaway

In an April 30, 2025 under-advisement ruling, the court granted summary judgment to Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and all of the moving individual defendants on every count. Every claim rested on the allegation that the community’s inoperative gate at the Happy Valley Road entrance — left open at the direction of the board president — allowed the shooter in. Because undisputed security-camera evidence showed the shooter approaching from the north, fleeing to the north, and riding away on a bicycle from the north, and the plaintiffs admitted they had no evidence he came through the gate, the court concluded that no reasonable jury could infer gate entry, so causation failed. At the same time, the court held — following Gfeller v. Scottsdale Vista North Townhomes Association — that a declaration’s allocation of common-area maintenance to an association creates a negligence duty running to owners and their invitees. The defense won on causation, not on the absence of a duty.

Case Participants

Petitioner Side

Merrick Avenue Management, LLC (Plaintiff)
Lead plaintiff in CV2023-008406, suing alongside homeowners Edward Trenton Albarracin and Gretchen Marie Zamjahn on negligence claims arising from the open community gate.
Edward Trenton Albarracin (Plaintiff)
Co-owner of the Scottsdale residence where the February 18, 2023 shooting occurred; a plaintiff in this case and, per the January 2024 consolidation hearing, a defendant in Douglas Cordano’s pre-consolidation case. Docketed in the party records as Trenton Edward Albarricin.
Gretchen Marie Zamjahn (Plaintiff)
Co-owner of the residence where the shooting occurred; a plaintiff in this case and, per the January 2024 consolidation hearing, a defendant in Douglas Cordano’s pre-consolidation case.
Douglas J. Cordano (Consolidated Plaintiff)
Shooting victim. He went to the residence on February 18, 2023 to administer IV injections to the owners and was shot at close range in the driveway. His separate case, CV2023-012338, was consolidated into this case in January 2024; he later obtained default judgments against Patrick Gruchala and Carrie A. Luikens.
Cody J. Jess (Counsel)
Counsel listed in the minute-entry captions and party records for plaintiffs Merrick Avenue Management, LLC, Edward Trenton Albarracin, and Gretchen Marie Zamjahn.
Joshua Taylor Greer (Counsel)
Counsel appearing for the Merrick Avenue plaintiffs, including at the January 2024 consolidation hearing, the December 2024 order-to-show-cause hearing, and the April 30, 2025 summary-judgment argument.
Steven A. Cohen (Counsel)
Counsel of record for consolidated plaintiff Douglas J. Cordano throughout the collected minute entries.

Respondent Side

Troon Village Association (Defendant)
Association whose CC&Rs the complaint alleged apply to the plaintiffs’ property and make it responsible in part for Common Areas, including the gates at issue. Its motion to dismiss (joint with Cornerstone) was denied in September 2023; it was not among the defendants granted summary judgment in April 2025.
Cornerstone Properties, Inc. (Defendant)
Co-defendant that moved to dismiss jointly with Troon Village Association; the motion was denied in September 2023. Not among the defendants granted summary judgment in April 2025.
Troon Fairways Homeowners Association (Defendant)
The association (called “the HOA” in the summary-judgment ruling) whose common areas include the Happy Valley Road entrance gate. It moved for summary judgment with the individual defendants on January 29, 2025 and prevailed on all counts on April 30, 2025; it withdrew its motions for entry of judgment and attorneys’ fees in June 2025.
Jeffrey D. Kinney (Defendant)
Troon Fairways board president who, per the undisputed facts in the summary-judgment ruling, directed that the non-functioning gate be left open. One of only two individual defendants on the board on February 18, 2023, and the only one the evidence linked to the gate decision; summary judgment was nonetheless granted in his favor.
Pamela D. North (Defendant)
Individual defendant identified in the summary-judgment ruling as Mr. Kinney’s spouse; granted summary judgment.
Shari L. Weintraub (Defendant)
The other individual defendant who served on the board on February 18, 2023; the court found no evidence linking her to any action. Listed pro per in the party records; granted summary judgment.
Sanford L. and Amy J. Friedman; Richard S. and Linda K. Jaffee; Eric and Melissa Mack Gold; Todd D. Weintraub (Defendants)
Individual defendants the court found had no facts tying them to the allegations; the ruling states summary judgment was appropriate for them regardless of the gate-entry analysis.
Amcor Property Professionals, Inc. (Defendant)
Defendant whose Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss was denied in October 2023 without prejudice to a later summary-judgment motion; at the April 30, 2025 argument the court noted Amcor’s own motion for summary judgment had been filed but it was not decided in that ruling.
MC General Contracting, LLC (Defendant)
Defendant in the consolidated litigation that appeared through counsel at the January 2024 consolidation hearing and the December 2024 order-to-show-cause hearing.
Patrick Gruchala (Defendant (consolidated))
Identified in the April 2025 summary-judgment ruling as the shooter. A pro per defendant in the consolidated case; Commissioner Albrecht entered a default judgment against him on June 19, 2025.
Carrie A. Luikens (Defendant (consolidated))
Pro per defendant in the consolidated case; ordered in December 2024 to appear for a deposition, and a default judgment was entered against her on June 19, 2025.
Quinten T. Cupps (Counsel)
Counsel of record for Troon Village Association and Cornerstone Properties, Inc. through the January 2024 consolidation hearing.
Christina N. Morgan (Counsel)
Attorney listed for Troon Village Association and Cornerstone Properties, Inc. in the party records and minute-entry captions from September 2024 onward.
DeeAnn Marie Barnes (Counsel)
Counsel appearing for Troon Village Association and Cornerstone Properties, Inc. at the December 2024 hearing and the April 30, 2025 summary-judgment argument.
Geoffrey G. Collins (Counsel)
Counsel of record for Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and individual defendants Kinney, North, the Friedmans, the Jaffees, and the Golds.
Tessa Knueppel (Counsel)
Counsel of record for Amcor Property Professionals, Inc.

Neutral Parties

Jay Ryan Adleman (Judge)
Maricopa County Superior Court judge originally assigned to the case; disqualified himself in September 2023.
Katherine Cooper (Judge)
Maricopa County Superior Court judge who received the case on reassignment, denied the Troon Village/Cornerstone and Amcor motions to dismiss in 2023, and granted consolidation in January 2024.
Scott Minder (Judge)
Maricopa County Superior Court judge who assumed the calendar effective June 21, 2024 and issued the April 30, 2025 under-advisement ruling granting summary judgment.
Richard Albrecht (Commissioner)
Maricopa County Superior Court commissioner who handled the default proceedings and entered the June 19, 2025 default judgments against Patrick Gruchala and Carrie A. Luikens.

What happened

Edward Trenton Albarracin and Gretchen Marie Zamjahn own a home in Scottsdale inside the Troon Fairways Homeowners Association; the complaint alleged the property is also part of Troon Village Association and subject to its CC&Rs. Under the governing CC&Rs, the association is contractually obligated to maintain the common areas, including the gate at the community’s entrance off Happy Valley Road. On February 18, 2023, Douglas J. Cordano went to the residence to administer IV injections to the owners. Security cameras recorded Patrick Gruchala — who in the preceding days had entered a business deal regarding his own home with Mr. Albarracin or Mr. Albarracin’s company — walking southbound past the driveway, then running into the driveway and shooting into Mr. Cordano’s driver’s-side window eight times at point-blank range before fleeing north on foot and, moments later, riding a bicycle south on Alma School Road. It is undisputed that the entrance gate was not functioning that day, had been inoperative for days or weeks, and had been left open at the direction of board president Jeffrey Kinney.

Merrick Avenue Management, LLC, Mr. Albarracin, and Ms. Zamjahn sued Troon Village Association, Cornerstone Properties, Inc., Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association, individual owners and board members, and Amcor Property Professionals, Inc. in Maricopa County Superior Court (CV2023-008406), asserting negligence claims that all related to the open gate. Mr. Cordano brought his own case (CV2023-012338), in which Mr. Albarracin and Ms. Zamjahn appeared as defendants. The originally assigned judge, Jay Ryan Adleman, disqualified himself in September 2023, and the case was reassigned to Judge Katherine Cooper. On September 18, 2023, Judge Cooper denied Troon Village Association and Cornerstone’s motion to dismiss, finding the complaint adequately alleged that the TVA CC&Rs are the source of a contractual duty to maintain Common Areas, including the gates. On October 12, 2023, she denied Amcor’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion as well, while noting the ruling did not decide that Amcor actually owed a duty and did not preclude a later summary-judgment motion. In January 2024, all counsel stipulated to consolidating the two cases under CV2023-008406.

Through 2024 the case moved through amended scheduling orders: the trial-setting conference originally set for November 2024 was reset several times, ultimately to August 12, 2025, and Judge Scott Minder assumed the calendar effective June 21, 2024. Meanwhile, default applications against consolidated defendants Patrick Gruchala and Carrie A. Luikens were referred to Commissioner Richard Albrecht, and at a December 2024 order-to-show-cause hearing Ms. Luikens was ordered to appear for a deposition the following January.

On January 29, 2025, Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and individual defendants Kinney, North, Friedman, Weintraub, Jaffe, and Gold moved for summary judgment on all counts. After oral argument on April 30, 2025, Judge Minder granted the motion the same day in an under-advisement ruling. The court explained that the inoperative gate underlay every claim, so the plaintiffs had to be able to show a jury that Mr. Gruchala entered the community through the Happy Valley Road gate. The undisputed video evidence pointed the other way: he approached the residence from the north, fled north after the shooting, and was recorded moments later on a bicycle on Alma School Road. The plaintiffs admitted they had no evidence he came through the gate and relied on a jury inference, but the court walked through the implausible alternative scenarios such an inference would require and concluded it was not reasonable on the record. A fallback theory — that the long-open gate let the shooter scout the area on an earlier date — was rejected as pure speculation.

The ruling is notable for what the defense did not win. On duty, the court followed Gfeller v. Scottsdale Vista North Townhomes Association and held that the CC&Rs’ allocation of common-area maintenance to the association creates a negligence duty — the association owed the owner plaintiffs, and their invitees, a duty to maintain the gate as part of the common areas. Citing Perez v. Circle K, the court refused the defendants’ invitation to define the duty narrowly as one to prevent an unforeseeable shooting, because that would intertwine duty with breach and causation. It rejected Mr. Cordano’s separate business-invitee theory against the association, since the association had not invited him for business purposes, but still extended the maintenance duty to residents’ invitees. On causation, the court said that if there had been a reasonable basis to conclude the shooter came through the gate, causation would have been for the jury — evidence suggested the association knew of prior security incidents potentially related to the open gate. And among the individual defendants, only Mr. Kinney and Shari Weintraub served on the board on the day of the shooting; the evidence linked only Mr. Kinney to the decision to leave the gate open, so all individual defendants except Mr. Kinney (and Ms. North as his spouse) would have been dismissed in any event. The court also observed that no complaint pleaded a negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim.

The collected minute entries end in mid-2025 with the case still active. The Troon Fairways defendants filed motions for entry of judgment and attorneys’ fees in May 2025 but withdrew them in June. On June 19, 2025, after an evidentiary default hearing at which Mr. Cordano testified, Commissioner Albrecht entered default judgments against Mr. Gruchala and Ms. Luikens. The claims involving Troon Village Association, Cornerstone Properties, and Amcor — whose own summary-judgment motion had been noted at the April 30 argument — were not resolved in the collected minute entries.

Procedural timeline

Step 2023-02-18 Douglas Cordano is shot in the driveway of the Albarracin/Zamjahn residence inside the Troon Fairways community; the Happy Valley Road entrance gate is inoperative and has been left open at the board president’s direction.

Step 2023 Merrick Avenue Management, LLC, Edward Trenton Albarracin, and Gretchen Marie Zamjahn sue Troon Village Association, Cornerstone Properties, Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association, individual defendants, and Amcor (CV2023-008406); Douglas Cordano files a separate case (CV2023-012338).

Step 2023-09-14 Judge Jay Ryan Adleman disqualifies himself; the case is reassigned to Judge Katherine Cooper.

Step 2023-09-18 Judge Cooper denies Troon Village Association and Cornerstone’s motion to dismiss: the complaint adequately alleges the TVA CC&Rs as the source of a duty to maintain Common Areas, including the gates.

Step 2023-10-12 Judge Cooper denies Amcor’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, without deciding that Amcor actually owed a duty and without precluding a later summary-judgment motion.

Step 2024-01-19 By stipulation of all counsel, CV2023-008406 and CV2023-012338 are consolidated under CV2023-008406.

Step 2024-03-04 to 2024-11-15 Scheduling orders are amended several times; the trial-setting conference is reset from November 2024 ultimately to August 12, 2025, and Judge Scott Minder assumes the calendar effective June 21, 2024.

Step 2024-10-04 Plaintiff’s default applications against consolidated defendants Patrick Gruchala and Carrie A. Luikens are referred to Commissioner Richard Albrecht.

Step 2024-12-02 At an order-to-show-cause hearing on Cordano’s failure-to-appear motion, Ms. Luikens is ordered to appear for a January deposition.

Step 2025-01-29 Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and individual defendants Kinney, North, Friedman, Weintraub, Jaffe, and Gold move for summary judgment on all counts.

Step 2025-04-30 After oral argument, Judge Minder issues an under-advisement ruling granting the Troon Fairways defendants summary judgment on all counts: a jury could not reasonably infer the shooter entered through the gate, so causation fails, although the CC&Rs did create a duty to maintain the gate for owners and their invitees.

Type: Decision or judgment

Shows the filer trying to move the case forward because the opposing party had not timely appeared.

Download source file

2025-06-19_020_default-judgment.pdf

FAQ

Why did the case turn on how the shooter entered the community?

Because every negligence claim against the association defendants rested on the allegation that the inoperative, open gate at the Happy Valley Road entrance let the shooter in. The court held the plaintiffs therefore had to give a jury some basis to find that Mr. Gruchala actually entered through that gate. The undisputed security video showed him approaching the residence from the north, fleeing north, and riding a bicycle away on Alma School Road moments later; the plaintiffs admitted they had no evidence of gate entry. The court concluded a jury could not reasonably infer gate entry without setting aside that video evidence, so summary judgment was granted.

Did the court decide the HOA owed no duty to anyone?

No — the opposite. Following Gfeller v. Scottsdale Vista North Townhomes Association, the court held that the CC&Rs’ allocation of common-area maintenance to the association creates a duty for negligence purposes, and it extended that duty not only to owners but also to their invitees, like Mr. Cordano. Citing Perez v. Circle K, it refused to define the duty narrowly as one to prevent an unforeseeable shooting, because that would improperly mix duty with breach and causation. The association won on causation, not duty.

What happened to the individual board members and homeowners who were sued?

All of the moving individual defendants were granted summary judgment. The court also explained that most of them would have exited the case anyway: only Jeffrey Kinney and Shari Weintraub served on the board on the day of the shooting, the evidence linked only Mr. Kinney to the decision to leave the gate open, and no facts tied the Friedmans, the Jaffees, the Golds, or Todd Weintraub to the allegations at all. Neither plaintiff disputed that result.

Did the April 2025 ruling end the whole case?

No. It resolved all counts against Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and the moving individual defendants only. Troon Village Association and Cornerstone Properties — whose 2023 motion to dismiss had been denied — were not part of the motion, and Amcor’s own summary-judgment motion was noted at the April 30 argument but not decided in the ruling. In June 2025, default judgments were entered against consolidated defendants Patrick Gruchala and Carrie A. Luikens. The collected minute entries end on June 19, 2025 with the case still active.

What is an under-advisement ruling?

When an Arizona superior-court judge takes a motion “under advisement” after briefing or argument, the later written decision is filed as an under-advisement ruling in the court’s minute entries. The April 30, 2025 ruling in this case is that kind of decision: after the morning’s oral argument, the court issued a written order the same day setting out the undisputed facts, the summary-judgment standard, and its analysis of duty, causation, and the individual defendants. These rulings are public records available through the Clerk of the Superior Court.

Is this decision binding on other Arizona HOA disputes?

No. Superior-court rulings bind only the parties and are not precedent. The case is still useful reading for two reasons: it applies Gfeller to hold that CC&R maintenance obligations create a negligence duty running to owners and their invitees, and it shows that duty alone does not carry a case — a plaintiff must still produce evidence from which a jury could reasonably find that the association’s alleged failure actually caused the harm. Note also that the case remained active against other defendants when the collected minute entries end in June 2025, so later rulings may exist.

Case Dossier

This generated dossier mirrors the structured data surfaced on the OAH/ADRE case pages. It is added from the curated court-case record and the custom page source package, while the hand-authored analysis below remains intact.

Case Summary

Case ID / citation	CV2023-008406 (Maricopa County Superior Court)
Court / tribunal	Superior Court
Decision / key date	April 30, 2025
Judge / panel	Hon. Scott Minder, Hon. Katherine Cooper
Parties	Merrick Avenue Management, LLC; Edward Trenton Albarracin; Gretchen Marie Zamjahn (Plaintiffs) and Douglas J. Cordano (Consolidated Plaintiff) v. Troon Village Association; Cornerstone Properties, Inc.; Troon Fairways Homeowners Association; Amcor Property Professionals, Inc.; individual board members and homeowners; and consolidated defendants (Defendants)
Topics	cc-and-rsboard-governanceprocedure
Outcome / holding	The superior court granted Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association and the moving individual defendants summary judgment on all counts because no reasonable jury could infer that the shooter entered the community through the Happy Valley Road gate — the central allegation underlying every claim — while holding that the CC&Rs’ allocation of common-area maintenance to the association creates a negligence duty running to owners and their invitees under Gfeller, and that causation would otherwise have been a jury question.
Primary public source	View source opinion/order

Parties, Court, and Research Coverage

Uploaded source package	20 PDFs
Step-by-step docket roadmap	13 roadmap entries
Video overview	No video embed currently configured
Study / briefing material	1 section
FAQ / homeowner questions	6 questions
Curated download aliases	1 download link

Key Issues & Findings

Case Summary

After Douglas Cordano was shot eight times at point-blank range on February 18, 2023 while parked in the driveway of a Scottsdale home inside the Troon Fairways community, the homeowners (with Merrick Avenue Management, LLC) and Cordano brought negligence suits against Troon Village Association, Cornerstone Properties, Troon Fairways Homeowners’ Association, individual board members and homeowners, and Amcor Property Professionals. Every claim rested on the allegation that the community’s entrance gate off Happy Valley Road — inoperative for days or weeks and left open at the direction of board president Jeffrey Kinney — allowed the shooter, Patrick Gruchala, into the community. In 2023 the court denied motions to dismiss by Troon Village/Cornerstone and Amcor, holding the complaint adequately alleged CC&R-based duties to maintain common areas including the gates, and the two cases were consolidated in January 2024. On April 30, 2025, the court granted the Troon Fairways defendants summary judgment on all counts: undisputed security video showed Gruchala approaching from and fleeing to the north, the plaintiffs admitted they had no evidence of gate entry, and a jury could not reasonably infer he came through the gate — so causation failed even though the court, following Gfeller, found the CC&Rs created a duty to maintain the gate for owners and their invitees. Default judgments against consolidated defendants Gruchala and Carrie Luikens were entered June 19, 2025; the case remained active against other defendants when the collected minute entries end.

Key Issues & Findings

Applying the Orme School standard, the court found the burden shifted to the plaintiffs once the defendants pointed to the undisputed security-camera evidence: Gruchala walked southbound on 104th Way from north of the residence, ran back north immediately after shooting Cordano, and was recorded moments later riding a bicycle southbound on Alma School Road. The plaintiffs admitted they had no evidence he came through the gate and relied entirely on a jury inference. The court walked through the alternative scenarios that inference would require — stashing or retrieving a bicycle over a wall, walking exposed along busy streets, passing the same cameras without triggering them — and concluded no jury could reasonably draw it, particularly given short walls and an ungated golf-cart opening beside the gate. A fallback theory that the long-open gate let Gruchala scout the area on an earlier day was rejected as pure speculation, noting he had searched the address online and no evidence showed any prior entry.

On duty, the court followed Gfeller v. Scottsdale Vista North Townhomes Association and held that the CC&Rs — which obligate the association to manage, maintain, repair, replace, and improve the Common Areas, with assessments used to promote the recreation, health, safety and welfare of the Owners — create a negligence duty to owner-members to maintain the common areas, including the entrance gate. Citing Perez v. Circle K, it refused to define the duty narrowly as one to prevent an unforeseeable targeted shooting, because framing duty that way would improperly intertwine it with breach and causation. The court rejected Cordano’s business-invitee theory against the association, since the association had not invited him for any business purpose, but nonetheless found the maintenance duty ran to residents’ invitees as well. Summary judgment therefore could not rest on absence of duty as to any plaintiff.

On causation, the court held the plaintiffs’ inability to show gate entry was dispositive: without it, the open gate could not have caused any damages. It emphasized that if a reasonable basis for gate entry existed, causation would have gone to the jury, because evidence suggested the association knew of prior security incidents potentially related to the open gate and of the security value of a working gate. Separately, only Kinney and Shari Weintraub served on the board on the day of the shooting; evidence linked only Kinney to the decision to leave the gate open, so all individual defendants except Kinney (and North as his spouse) were entitled to judgment regardless — a result neither plaintiff disputed. The court also noted that no complaint pleaded negligent infliction of emotional distress and declined to limit the recoverable damages on the summary-judgment record. In June 2025 the Fairways defendants withdrew their motions for entry of judgment and attorneys’ fees, and default judgments were entered against consolidated defendants Gruchala and Luikens.

Why It Matters

This case is a clear illustration of how Arizona courts treat an association’s CC&R maintenance obligations in tort. Following Gfeller, the court held that when a declaration assigns common-area maintenance — here, a community entrance gate — to an association, that assignment creates a negligence duty for purposes of a lawsuit, and the duty runs not only to owner-members but to their invitees. Boards cannot assume that a criminal act by a third party, or the fact that an injury happened on a private driveway, erases the basic duty to maintain what the CC&Rs put in their charge; under Perez v. Circle K, those arguments go to breach and causation, not duty.

At the same time, the ruling shows that duty alone does not decide a case. The plaintiffs lost because they could not produce evidence from which a jury could reasonably find the open gate actually mattered — the shooter’s recorded movements pointed to a different entry route, and speculation could not fill the gap. For individual board members, the decision is also instructive: directors who were not on the board at the relevant time, or whom no evidence ties to the challenged decision, were entitled to exit the case, while the board president who directed that the broken gate be left open was the one individual with potential exposure. As a superior-court decision it binds only these parties, and the case remained active against other defendants — including Troon Village Association, Cornerstone Properties, and Amcor Property Professionals — when the collected minute entries end in June 2025.

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