## Facts

- The Ridgely Condominium is a Towson, Maryland high-rise condominium completed in 1975 with residential units on floors two through twenty-eight and up to seven first-floor units permitted for use as professional offices under the bylaws.
- The condominium’s main lobby and central entrance were general common elements and had long been used by clients of the first-floor professional offices to enter and exit the building.
- The first-floor commercial units also could be reached through an exterior rear entrance; evidence described that entrance as less suitable for client access (a steel door and an uncovered exterior approach).
- After the lobby was redecorated in 1990, some residential owners complained that commercial clients using the lobby created security, safety, and aesthetic concerns and interfered with residents’ enjoyment of the lobby area.
- The Ridgely Condominium Association first sought voluntary compliance through a resolution asking commercial owners to direct clients to the rear entrance.
- When voluntary efforts did not resolve the dispute, the Association adopted a bylaw amendment barring clients (and similar invitees) of the first-floor professional offices from using the main lobby for ingress and egress to those offices.
- The affected commercial-unit owners (including Nicholas Smyrnioudis, Jr., Nicholas Smyrnioudis, Sr., and other first-floor unit owners) filed suit in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County seeking to stop enforcement of the amendment.
- After a two-day hearing, the circuit court (Judge Fader) found the restriction unreasonable and entered an injunction preventing the Association from prohibiting client ingress and egress through the main lobby.
- The Court of Special Appeals affirmed, and the Court of Appeals of Maryland granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether the bylaw amendment banning commercial clients from using the lobby was a valid and reasonable regulation of the use of common elements adopted by the vote required for bylaw changes.
2. Whether the Association could, through a bylaw amendment, effectively deprive commercial-unit owners of a significant incident of their ownership interest in the general common elements (the lobby) without satisfying statutory and declaration requirements governing changes to owners’ common-element interests, including unanimity where required.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed the judgment upholding the injunction against enforcement of the bylaw amendment.
- The Court held that the lobby-access ban was not a reasonable use regulation as applied to these commercial-unit owners and their clients.
- The Court further concluded that an association may not use bylaws to impose a restriction that functions as a substantial deprivation of unit owners’ common-element rights without following the Maryland Condominium Act and the condominium’s governing documents for changes affecting those rights.

## Legal Principles

- Condominium ownership in Maryland includes exclusive title to the unit plus an undivided tenancy-in-common interest in the common elements; the latter is a property interest, not a revocable privilege.
- General common elements (such as a main lobby) are held for the benefit of all unit owners subject to reasonable governance and use rules.
- Associations may adopt and enforce rules regulating the use of common elements, but such rules must be reasonable in light of the condominium’s permitted uses, the burdens imposed, and the interests asserted by the association.
- A rule that materially interferes with, or effectively destroys, a significant incident of a unit owner’s common-element ownership cannot be sustained merely because it is labeled a “use restriction”; it must comply with statutory and documentary limits on changing common-element rights, including consent requirements for changes that effectively reallocate those rights.
- Judicial review of condominium restrictions is not limited to automatic deference; courts may enjoin enforcement when a restriction is unreasonable or exceeds the association’s authority under the Act and the governing documents.

## Conclusion

The Court of Appeals affirmed an injunction barring enforcement of The Ridgely Condominium Association’s bylaw amendment that prohibited clients of first-floor professional offices from using the building’s main lobby, holding that the restriction was unreasonable and could not be imposed as a bylaw “use regulation” when it substantially impaired the commercial owners’ protected common-element rights without compliance with the Maryland Condominium Act and the condominium’s declaration.


Ridgely Condo. Ass’n v. Smyrnioudis, 343 Md. 357, 681 A.2d 494 (1996)