CC&Rs & Board Governance | A.R.S. §§ 10-3825, 10-3830 | CV2016-011505
In this Maricopa County Superior Court case, Darryl and Ann Roberts and their qualified trust sued Windy Walk Homeowners Association, three related associations, four individual committee-member defendants, and the Cost-Sharing Committee of the Third Amended and Restated Master Easement and Cost-Sharing Agreement. The court refused to dismiss the First Amended Verified Complaint at the pleading stage — holding that Arizona’s notice-pleading standard was satisfied, that the parties’ rights and obligations are governed by the Windy Walk CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement, and that committee-member conduct is measured under A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 rather than the statute the defendants relied on — and later twice found the plaintiff entitled to attorneys’ fees over the defendants’ repeated failure to provide the same discovery.
Last updated July 2, 2026. Case: Darryl J. Roberts, et al. v. Windy Walk Homeowners Association, et al., Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2016-011505.
Scope note: This page covers Darryl J. Roberts, et al. v. Windy Walk Homeowners Association, et al. (Maricopa County Superior Court No. CV2016-011505) as a public Arizona superior-court HOA case guide. It is built from the court’s own filed minute entries, including the November 16, 2017 under-advisement ruling on the defendants’ Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss and the November 19, 2018 Rule 37(b) sanctions ruling; the complete set of collected minute entries is available in the source-document index below. Currency caveat: the collected minute entries run only through November 19, 2018, when the case was still active and in discovery — no final judgment or trial outcome appears in the collected record, so this page cannot say how the case ultimately ended. Superior-court rulings bind only the parties and are not precedent. This page is educational and is not legal advice.
The takeaway
The superior court denied the eight moving defendants’ Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss without prejudice. It held that Rule 12(b)(6) motions are disfavored under Arizona law, that key paragraphs of the First Amended Verified Complaint satisfied Arizona’s notice-pleading standard, and that even a deficient complaint must ordinarily be given a chance to be cured by amendment before dismissal. The court also held that the parties’ rights and obligations are governed by the Windy Walk CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement attached to the complaint, and that the conduct of the committee-member defendants is measured under A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 — the general standards and rebuttable presumption for committee members’ acts, omissions, and discharge of duties — rather than the Nonprofit Corporation Act provision the defendants relied on. A year later, the court granted the plaintiff a second entitlement to reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs as Rule 37(b) sanctions for the defendants’ repeated failure to provide the same discovery.
Case Participants
Petitioner Side
- Darryl J. Roberts (Plaintiff)
Lead plaintiff; sued the Windy Walk association defendants together with Ann K. Roberts and the couple’s qualified trust. - Ann K. Roberts (Plaintiff)
Co-plaintiff alongside Darryl J. Roberts. - Darryl J. Roberts / Ann K. Roberts Qualified Trust (Plaintiff)
Trust co-plaintiff represented by the same counsel as the individual plaintiffs. - Mark Bainbridge (Counsel)
Counsel of record for plaintiffs Darryl J. Roberts, Ann K. Roberts, and the Roberts qualified trust throughout the collected minute entries.
Respondent Side
- Windy Walk Homeowners Association (Defendant)
Lead defendant association; its CC&Rs were Exhibit A to the First Amended Verified Complaint, and the court held they govern the parties’ rights and obligations. - Ballantrae Ridge Homeowners Association (Defendant)
One of the four association defendants that jointly filed the June 2017 Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. - Troon Mountain Community Association (Defendant)
One of the four association defendants that jointly filed the June 2017 Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. - Skye Top at Troon Homeowners Association (Defendant)
One of the four association defendants that jointly filed the June 2017 Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. - Michael Kieffer (Defendant)
One of the four individuals the court’s November 2017 ruling refers to collectively as the Individual Committee Member defendants; the court’s party records list attorney Lynn Krupnik as his counsel. - George Howison (Defendant)
One of the four Individual Committee Member defendants who joined the June 2017 motion to dismiss. - Richard Shenkus (Defendant)
One of the four Individual Committee Member defendants who joined the June 2017 motion to dismiss. - Richard Fretland (Defendant)
One of the four Individual Committee Member defendants who joined the June 2017 motion to dismiss. - Cost-Sharing Committee of the Third Amended and Restated Master Easement and Cost-Sharing Agreement (Defendant)
Committee defendant listed in the court’s party records as appearing pro per; it was not among the eight defendants that filed the June 2017 motion to dismiss. The Cost-Sharing Agreement was Exhibit B to the First Amended Verified Complaint. - Michael H. Orcutt (Counsel)
Counsel of record for the Windy Walk association defendants in the minute-entry captions throughout the collected record. - Daxton R. Watson (Counsel)
Appeared for the defendants on behalf of Michael H. Orcutt at the September 18, 2017 oral argument. - Thomas Brent Demmitt (Counsel)
Appeared for the defendants on behalf of Michael H. Orcutt at the September 18, 2017 oral argument. - Lynn M. Krupnik (Counsel)
Listed in the court’s party records as counsel for defendant Michael Kieffer; appears on the distribution of the November 19, 2018 sanctions ruling.
Neutral Parties
- Connie Contes (Judge)
Maricopa County Superior Court judge who presided over all collected minute entries, including the November 2017 under-advisement ruling and the November 2018 sanctions ruling.
What happened
Darryl J. Roberts, Ann K. Roberts, and the Darryl J. Roberts / Ann K. Roberts Qualified Trust sued in Maricopa County Superior Court (CV2016-011505), naming as defendants four homeowners associations — Windy Walk Homeowners Association, Ballantrae Ridge Homeowners Association, Troon Mountain Community Association, and Skye Top at Troon Homeowners Association — four individuals the court’s ruling refers to collectively as the Individual Committee Member defendants (Michael Kieffer, George Howison, Richard Shenkus, and Richard Fretland), and the Cost-Sharing Committee of the Third Amended and Restated Master Easement and Cost-Sharing Agreement. The operative pleading was a First Amended Verified Complaint that attached the Windy Walk CC&Rs as Exhibit A and the Cost-Sharing Agreement as Exhibit B.
On June 27, 2017, the four associations and the four individual defendants jointly filed a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The plaintiffs responded on July 14, 2017, and the moving defendants replied on July 26, 2017. Judge Connie Contes set oral argument for September 14, 2017, then reset it to September 18, 2017 because of a calendar conflict. At the September 18 hearing, Mark Bainbridge appeared for the plaintiffs and Daxton R. Watson and Thomas Brent Demmitt appeared for the defendants on behalf of Michael H. Orcutt; after argument, the court took the motion under advisement.
In its November 16, 2017 under-advisement ruling, the court denied the motion. It began with the settled framework: Rule 12(b)(6) motions are not favored under Arizona law, dismissal is permitted only when a plaintiff would not be entitled to relief under any interpretation of the facts susceptible of proof, and the court must accept the nonmoving party’s material factual allegations as true. The defendants’ motion rested substantially on asserted pleading deficiencies — they highlighted conclusory statements and general accusations in paragraphs 23, 29, 35, 36, and 42 of the First Amended Complaint — but the court found that paragraphs 30-32, 39, and 44-50 complied with Arizona’s notice-pleading standards, which require only that a complaint give the opponent fair notice of the nature and basis of the claim. The court added that even a deficient complaint must ordinarily be given an opportunity to be cured by amendment before dismissal, and that if the defendants did not fully understand the claims, the mandatory disclosure process — followed if necessary by a summary-judgment motion under the Celotex principle adopted in Orme School — was the more effective and efficient tool.
The ruling also sorted out the governing law. The court held that the defendants’ reliance on A.R.S. § 10-3304(B)(2) of the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the Rohde case was misplaced and inapposite; the more applicable statutory sections were A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830, which set the general standards and rebuttable presumption for the acts, omissions, and discharge of duties of committee members, along with A.R.S. §§ 10-11602 and 10-11620. Beyond the statutes, the court stated that the rights and obligations of the plaintiff and the defendants are governed by the terms of the CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement attached to the complaint. The denial was without prejudice but came with conditions: before filing any new or renewed motion to dismiss based on pleading deficiencies, the parties had to meet and confer — through personal, not written, communication — about whether an amendment or disclosure statement could cure the problem, and any renewed motion had to certify that the conference occurred. The plaintiff, for its part, was ordered to serve a detailed, fact-specific disclosure statement within 30 days.
The later collected entries show the case grinding through discovery. On August 9, 2018, pursuant to signed orders regarding a motion to compel and a motion to amend the complaint, the court excused the assigned arbitrator. On September 7, 2018 the plaintiff filed a Motion for Rule 37(b) Sanctions for failure to comply with a court order, which was fully briefed by October 8. In its November 19, 2018 ruling, the court noted this was the second time it had been asked to review the defendants’ failure to provide the same discovery, and rejected as meritless the defendants’ contention that responding fifty days after a court order — without communication, conferring, or ‘some form of professional courtesy’ — was not a failure to obey. For the second time, the court found the plaintiff entitled to recover its reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs for having to pursue the motion, though it deferred setting the amount until the submission of concluding documents; the other requested relief was denied at that time. The court also warned that if the case proceeded to trial, the trier of fact could be permitted to consider the untimely discovery as bearing on a party’s credibility. That sanctions ruling is the last collected minute entry, so the ultimate outcome of the case does not appear in this record.
Procedural timeline
Complete uploaded source-document index
This index is generated from every public-facing source file currently present in assets/court_case_downloads/darryl-j-roberts-v-windy-walk-homeowners-association/raw/: 6 PDFs. Files are ordered by the date/sequence embedded in the normalized filename; AI-generated review materials are labeled separately and should not be treated as court filings.
Oral Argument Set
Type: Court/source PDF
Uploaded source file in the case record; read it in sequence with the surrounding filings to follow the procedure.
Oral Argument Set
Type: Court/source PDF
Uploaded source file in the case record; read it in sequence with the surrounding filings to follow the procedure.
Minute Entry
Type: Court order/minute entry
Court or agency order; this is usually the document that tells readers what changed next.
Under Advisement Ruling
Type: Court order/minute entry
Court or agency order; this is usually the document that tells readers what changed next.
Minute Entry
Type: Court order/minute entry
Court or agency order; this is usually the document that tells readers what changed next.
Minute Entry
Type: Court order/minute entry
Court or agency order; this is usually the document that tells readers what changed next.
FAQ
Who won this case?
The collected minute entries do not show a final winner. Through November 19, 2018 — the last collected entry — the court had denied the eight moving defendants’ motion to dismiss without prejudice, excused the assigned arbitrator, and twice found the plaintiff entitled to attorneys’ fees and costs over the defendants’ failure to provide the same discovery. No final judgment, settlement, or trial outcome appears in the collected record, so this page cannot say how the case ultimately ended.
What is a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, and why did it fail here?
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion asks the court to throw out a complaint for failure to state a claim before any evidence is taken. The court explained that such motions are not favored under Arizona law: dismissal is permitted only when the plaintiff would not be entitled to relief under any interpretation of the facts susceptible of proof, and the court must accept the plaintiff’s factual allegations as true. Here, the defendants attacked conclusory statements in several paragraphs of the First Amended Complaint, but the court found other paragraphs (30-32, 39, and 44-50) satisfied Arizona’s notice-pleading standard, and noted that even a deficient complaint must ordinarily be given a chance to be cured by amendment before dismissal.
What law governs the conduct of HOA committee members, according to this ruling?
The court held that the defendants’ reliance on A.R.S. § 10-3304(B)(2) of the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the Rohde case was misplaced and inapposite. The more applicable provisions, it said, are A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 — which set the general standards and a rebuttable presumption for the acts, omissions, and discharge of duties of committee members — along with A.R.S. §§ 10-11602 and 10-11620. Beyond the statutes, the court stated that the parties’ rights and obligations are governed by the Windy Walk CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement attached to the complaint.
What conditions did the court attach when it denied the motion to dismiss?
The denial was without prejudice, but before filing any new or renewed motion to dismiss based on claimed pleading deficiencies, the affected parties had to meet and confer — through personal, not written, communication — about whether an amended complaint or a disclosure statement could cure the problem, and the renewed motion had to include a certification that the conference occurred and failed. The court warned that noncompliance could be grounds for rejecting the motion. The plaintiff was also ordered to serve a detailed, fact-specific disclosure statement within 30 days, with the court noting that notice pleading is insufficient in disclosure statements.
What were the Rule 37(b) sanctions about?
Rule 37(b) lets a court sanction a party that fails to obey a discovery order. In its November 19, 2018 ruling, the court noted it was the second time it had been asked to review the defendants’ failure to provide the same discovery, and rejected the defendants’ argument that responding fifty days after a court order — without communication or conferring — was not a violation. For the second time it found the plaintiff entitled to recover reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs for having to pursue the motion, though it deferred the amount until concluding documents. The court also warned that untimely discovery could be considered by the trier of fact as bearing on a party’s credibility, and directed the parties to use the expedited discovery-dispute procedure in Rule 26(d) before filing future discovery motions.
Is this decision binding on other Arizona HOA disputes?
No. Superior-court rulings bind only the parties to the case and are not precedent. The case is still useful reading: it shows how difficult it is to get an HOA lawsuit dismissed at the pleading stage in Arizona, which nonprofit-corporation statutes a court looks to for committee-member conduct, and the fee exposure an association side can build up by repeatedly failing to provide court-ordered discovery. Remember also that the collected minute entries end in November 2018 with the case still active, so the final outcome is not reflected here.
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 | CV2016-011505 (Maricopa County Superior Court) |
|---|---|
| Court / tribunal | Superior Court |
| Decision / key date | November 16, 2017 |
| Judge / panel | Hon. Connie Contes |
| Parties | Darryl J. Roberts, Ann K. Roberts, and the Darryl J. Roberts / Ann K. Roberts Qualified Trust (Plaintiffs) v. Windy Walk Homeowners Association, Ballantrae Ridge Homeowners Association, Troon Mountain Community Association, Skye Top at Troon Homeowners Association, Michael Kieffer, George Howison, Richard Shenkus, Richard Fretland, and the Cost-Sharing Committee of the Third Amended and Restated Master Easement and Cost-Sharing Agreement (Defendants) |
| Governing law | |
| Topics | procedurecc-and-rsboard-governanceattorneys-fees |
| Outcome / holding | The superior court denied the eight moving defendants’ Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss without prejudice, holding that the First Amended Verified Complaint satisfied Arizona’s notice-pleading standard, that the parties’ rights and obligations are governed by the Windy Walk CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement attached to the complaint, and that committee-member conduct is governed by A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 — not the § 10-3304(B)(2) provision the defendants invoked; any renewed motion required a personal (not written) meet-and-confer and certification, and the plaintiff was ordered to serve a detailed, fact-specific disclosure statement within 30 days. A year later the court granted in part the plaintiff’s Rule 37(b) sanctions motion, finding for the second time that the plaintiff was entitled to reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs for the defendants’ failure to provide the same discovery. |
| Primary public source | View source opinion/order |
Parties, Court, and Research Coverage
| Uploaded source package | 6 PDFs |
|---|---|
| Step-by-step docket roadmap | 10 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
Darryl and Ann Roberts and their qualified trust sued Windy Walk Homeowners Association, three other associations (Ballantrae Ridge, Troon Mountain, and Skye Top at Troon), four individuals the court called the Individual Committee Member defendants, and the Cost-Sharing Committee of the Third Amended and Restated Master Easement and Cost-Sharing Agreement. Their First Amended Verified Complaint attached the Windy Walk CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement as exhibits. Eight defendants jointly moved under Rule 12(b)(6) to dismiss for failure to state a claim, attacking the complaint as conclusory. After oral argument, Judge Connie Contes denied the motion without prejudice in a November 16, 2017 under-advisement ruling: key paragraphs satisfied Arizona’s notice-pleading standard, deficient pleadings must ordinarily be given a chance to be cured by amendment, the parties’ rights and obligations are governed by the CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement, and committee-member conduct is measured under A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 rather than § 10-3304(B)(2). The court conditioned any renewed motion on a personal (not written) meet-and-confer with certification and ordered the plaintiff to serve a detailed disclosure statement. In November 2018 the court granted in part the plaintiff’s Rule 37(b) sanctions motion — the second fee entitlement against the defendants over the same withheld discovery. The collected minute entries end there with the case still active.
The court’s November 16, 2017 under-advisement ruling started from the settled Arizona framework: Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss are not favored, dismissal is permitted only when the plaintiff would not be entitled to relief under any interpretation of the facts susceptible of proof, and the court must accept the nonmoving party’s material allegations as true and indulge all reasonable inferences in its favor. The defendants’ motion was predicated substantially on asserted pleading deficiencies — conclusory statements and general accusations in paragraphs 23, 29, 35, 36, and 42 of the First Amended Complaint — but the court held that unless a complaint is so lacking that a defendant cannot understand the basis for the claim and its general nature, dismissal is unwarranted, and found that paragraphs 30-32, 39, and 44-50 complied with Arizona’s notice-pleading standards. Even a deficient complaint, the court added, must ordinarily be given an opportunity to be cured by amendment before it can be dismissed, and any residual confusion about the claims was better addressed through the mandatory disclosure process, followed if necessary by a summary-judgment motion under the Celotex principle adopted in Orme School.
On the governing law, the court held the defendants’ reliance on A.R.S. § 10-3304(B)(2) of the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the Rohde case misplaced and inapposite. The more applicable provisions were A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 — which supply the general standards and rebuttable presumption for the acts, omissions, and other discharge of duties of committee members — along with A.R.S. §§ 10-11602 and 10-11620. Beyond the statutes, the rights and obligations of the plaintiff and the defendants are governed by the terms of the Windy Walk CC&Rs and the Cost-Sharing Agreement attached as Exhibits A and B to the complaint. The denial was without prejudice but conditioned: any new or renewed motion to dismiss based on pleading deficiencies required a prior personal (not written) meet-and-confer about whether amendment or disclosure could cure the problem, plus a certification that the conference failed, and the plaintiff had 30 days to serve a detailed, fact-specific disclosure statement.
The discovery phase produced the record’s other substantive ruling. On November 19, 2018, addressing the plaintiff’s Rule 37(b) sanctions motion, the court noted it was the second time it had been required to review the defendants’ failure to provide the same discovery, and rejected as meritless their contention that producing discovery fifty days after a court order — without communication, conferring, or ‘some form of professional courtesy’ — was not a failure to obey. For the second time the court granted the plaintiff an entitlement to its reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs for having to pursue the motion, deferring the amount until submission of concluding documents, while denying the other requested relief at that time. It warned that untimely discovery could be considered by the trier of fact as bearing on a party’s credibility and directed the parties to the expedited discovery-dispute procedure of Rule 26(d) going forward.
For Arizona homeowners suing an association — or associations defending such suits — this case is a clean illustration of how high the bar is for a pleading-stage dismissal. The court refused to toss the complaint even while acknowledging conclusory paragraphs, because notice pleading requires only fair notice of the claim, amendment must ordinarily be offered before dismissal, and disclosure and summary judgment are the preferred tools for testing weak claims. The meet-and-confer-plus-certification conditions the court attached to any renewed motion show how Maricopa County judges push parties to fix pleading fights without motion practice.
The ruling also matters for HOA governance disputes because it identifies the statutory home for claims about committee-member conduct: A.R.S. §§ 10-3825 and 10-3830 of the nonprofit-corporation statutes, with their general standards and rebuttable presumption for the discharge of duties, rather than § 10-3304(B)(2) — and it reiterates that the recorded governing documents (here the Windy Walk CC&Rs and a multi-association Master Easement and Cost-Sharing Agreement) define the parties’ rights and obligations. Finally, the 2018 sanctions ruling is a warning about discovery conduct: the association-side defendants twice ended up owing the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees over the same withheld discovery, and the court flagged that discovery failures can be used against a party’s credibility at trial. As a superior-court decision it binds only these parties, and the collected minute entries end in November 2018 with the case still active, so the ultimate outcome is not reflected in this record.