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Paid In Full: Watch Out for These Dangerous and Very Costly Words

What does your association do when an owner sends the association their assessment payment for less than full amount due? Say the owner owes $1,000.00, and only sends in $100.00 and on their check writes “paid in full.” Do you deposit the check and bill the owner for the difference? If you answered yes, then you are likely in the majority. But, given Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal, August 8, 2014, opinion in St. Croix Lane Trust (the “St. Croix Trust”) & M.L. Shapiro, Trustee (the “St. Croix Trustee”) v. St. Croix at Pelican Marsh Condominium Association, Inc. (the “Association”), you might seriously reconsider depositing that check in favor of sending it back to the owner and demanding full payment, instead. The answer will depend on whether the owner disputed the amount due.

In this case, the St. Croix Trust acquired its unit as a result of a foreclosure. Upon talking title, the Association demanded $38,586.11 as the assessments that remained due and owing. The St. Croix Trustee disputed the assessment amount and argued to the Association that it only owed $840.00. The St. Croix Trustee then sent its check in the amount of $840.00 to the Association and in so doing, wrote a restrictive endorsement on their check, “paid in full.” While the Association continued to seek the difference from the St. Croix Trustee, the attorney handling this collection matter for the Association deposited the $840.00 check. The Court held that the St. Croix Trust did not owe the balance due because the restrictive endorsement written on its check combined with the Association’s lawyer’s act of depositing the check was a de facto acceptance of the St. Croix Trust’s $840.00, a process in legal terms referred to as an “accord and satisfaction.”

An “accord and satisfaction” is discussed in section 673.111, Florida Statutes, more commonly known as the “Condominium Act.” This section provides, in relevant part, that:

“(1) If a person against whom a claim is asserted proves that that person in good faith tendered an instrument to the claimant as full satisfaction of the claim, that the amount of the claim was unliquidated or subject to a bona fide dispute, and that the claimant obtained payment of the instrument, the following subsections apply.

(2)…[T]he claim is discharged if the person against whom the claim is asserted proves that the instrument or an accompanying written communication contained a conspicuous statement to the effect that the instrument was tendered as full satisfaction of the claim.”

While there are a few exceptions to subsection (2), above, the Court found that none of them applied to this situation. The Court also held that none of the stated exceptions to the application of subsection (2) applied and thus, “[i]f the Association did not wish to accept the $840 check in full settlement of its claims in accordance with the [St. Croix] Trust’s tender, then it should have returned the check instead of negotiating [depositing] it.”

Being an astute reader of this column, you are already aware that that section 718.116(3) of the Condominium Act (as well as a similar provision set out in the Chapter 720, also known as the “Homeowners’ Association Act”) provides, in relevant part, that:

“…. Any payment received by an association must be applied first to any interest accrued by the association, then to any administrative late fee, then to any costs and reasonable attorney’s fees incurred in collection, and then to the delinquent assessment. The foregoing is applicable notwithstanding any restrictive endorsement, designation, or instruction placed on or accompanying a payment.” [emphasis added]

The Court looked to the legislative history and staff analysis of the legislation and found that it meant that, even if a check contained a restrictive endorsement which provided some other formula for the application of a payment, that nevertheless the monies were to be applied first to the accumulated interest, followed by late fees, attorney’s fees and costs and then to the delinquent assessment. In the Court’s opinion, the staff analyses confirmed that the pertinent language was added to invalidate restrictive endorsements that provide a formula for the application of payments other than as set forth in the statute. The Court found “nothing in the staff analyses suggesting that the amendment was intended to make section 673.3111 [the accord and satisfaction statute, above] inapplicable to condominium associations or that the amendment would otherwise alter Florida law concerning accord and satisfaction solely for the benefit of condominium associations.”

The key to understanding this outcome is that the St. Croix Trustee, an association member, had first disputed the assessment amount due, and then sent in the St. Croix Trust’s $840.00 check that contained the restrictive endorsement, “paid in full” which was deposited by the Association (or in this case, its attorney). With this in mind:

1) If the debt is disputed and less than the full amount due is provided with the written endorsement “paid in full,” do not deposit the check. Instead, send it back to the debtor and demand that the full amount past due be remitted.

2) If there is no dispute and less then the full amount due is sent in by the debtor and the check provided by the debtor contains written endorsement “paid in full,” then if the association deposits the check, it can argue that there was no “accord and satisfaction.” However, it may not be worth the risk, which leaves us with the safest alternative set out in No. 3 below.

3) Any time the association receives a check containing the written endorsement “paid in full,” then, unless the check actually represents the full amount due, do not deposit it but rather send it back and demand the debtor resubmit their check, this time in full.

With this newest wrinkle to association assessment collections, the Florida legislature should come to the aid of associations and clarify that if a debtor writes “paid in full” on their check, it is fully and unequivocally meaningless.