A community of residents 55 years old and up, displaying endurance and spunk, is emerging from a marathon legal battle with a big win over a leading home builder who charged them hefty “membership fees” to use pools, clubhouses and other amenities in their own neighborhood.

More than 5,000 households of Solivita, at the edge of metro Orlando, are in line for estimated average rebates of $10,000 from Solivita’s developer, Taylor Morrison Home Corp. The anticipated payouts are the resolution of a grueling lawsuit the Florida Supreme Court recently declined to reconsider.

In the wake of that epic victory, the homeowners were told just before Thanksgiving that they will no longer have to pay the monthly charge of nearly $100 for access to Solivita recreational amenities, a charge that came on top of their operation and maintenance fees. 

The legal saga provides an inside look at what is common in Florida: Developers wielding financial controls over their residential projects as they grow toward completion. The outcome may inspire other communities to scrutinize fees they must pay to those developers, said the victors, who noted gut-check moments.

“It’s fun when you’re winning,” said Norman Gundel, a Solivita resident and a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit on behalf of nearly 5,500 Solivita homes at the Osceola-Polk county line south of Kissimmee.

Gundel and the two other lead plaintiffs had been targeted by a multimillion dollar developer countersuit that ultimately failed. “It’s been a long seven years and it’s been difficult,” he said.

The outcome already stands as a little-guy-versus-Goliath morality tale, Solivita leaders say, in which a population of mostly retirees, many of them former government employees and relying on social security and pensions, challenged one of the nation’s largest residential developers.

“I’ve always been a fighter against what I perceived to be wrong and this didn’t pass the smell test,” said Brenda Taylor, a lead plaintiff. “Somebody had to stand up for the seniors and retirees here. Norm and I were both lawyers. I don’t know if most citizens would have stood up to the intimidation we were up against.”

Solivita homeowners have, however, grown intimate with intimidation.

They also are battling the powerful Orlando-based Central Florida Expressway Authority in its quest to construct a toll expressway through the heart of the unincorporated city of 70,000 residents that Solivita is a part of – Poinciana.

Last year, Solivita leaders lodged a civil rights complaint that the expressway would reprise past highway sins that severed communities in ways detrimental to people of color and lower incomes. Poinciana has large portions of both.

Solivita leaders say the proposed expressway that they deride as the Great Wall of Poinciana should be built along a route not destructive to the community and its residents.

“They worked hard all their lives and will defend their rights, whether it’s a court battle with a major corporation trying to take advantage of them through charging illegal fees or a governmental entity looking to destroy their community with a major highway,” said Lita Epstein, a Solivita resident and financial writer who was instrumental in the civil rights complaint and the runup to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit with Taylor Morrison alleged that the developer of Solivita illegally charged each home a mandatory monthly “Club Membership Fee” for access to clubhouses, pools, spa and fitness complexes, tennis and pickleball courts and other amenities.

The revenue added up quickly for the developer – to $3.4 million in 2016, the year prior to the lawsuit being filed in Polk County. The suit gained class action status in 2018.

The Club Membership Fee was “pure” and “illegal” profit for the developer, the lawsuit asserts.

A circuit court judge in 2021 agreed, awarding $39 million to Solivita homeowners who paid club membership fees from 2013 to the present.

Florida’s Sixth District Court of Appeal upheld the decision in June and the Supreme Court in early November declined to review the case.

“This was an overreach,” said Carter Andersen of the Bush Ross law firm in Tampa that led litigation for Solivita residents. “It was an effort to create this pure profit stream of money for the developer for the rest of time.”

The litigation, spanning 700 notices, motions, judgments and other proceedings, included many episodes in front of panels of appeals court judges.

Since the $39 million judgment, the damages to be rebated to Solivita residents have risen with ongoing club membership fee payments and interest to $60 million, Andersen said.

“The court got it right,” said Andersen, who hopes that refunds will be determined and distributed in the first half of the coming year.

Asked for a response to the Supreme Court refusal to consider Taylor Morrison’s appeal, company spokesperson Erin Kristick said in a statement: “Although we disagree, we respect the Court’s decision and will be working through the details.”

Although they will no longer have to pay the membership fee as of Dec. 1, Solivita residents will continue paying a monthly fee of $98 for recreational amenity expenses.

An issue that remains, Andersen said, is whether Taylor Morrison will be required to relinquish ownership of the extensive Solivita recreational amenities without charge to residents or their community’s homeowner association.

Andersen said that state law mandates – and plaintiffs in the Solivita case are asserting – that the developer must release ownership of common properties after selling nearly all of available homes and in Solivita’s case because residents have paid to operate and maintain recreational amenities for 24 years.

It’s not the first time ownership of Solivita amenities has been contested. An earlier showdown was pivotal to the lawsuit.

In 2015, the initial developer of Solivita, Avatar Properties Inc., tried to sell the amenities to Solivita’s community development district, saddling residents with huge debt.

The “CDD” is a taxing district that, like many in Florida, collects assessments from residents for improvements and maintenance in their community.

The sale price – which turned out to be key information for the lawsuit – was $73 million.

In a flurry of activities from 2015 to 2018, Epstein, the Solivita resident and financial writer, spearheaded opposition to the CDD’s issuance of bonds to purchase the amenities.

She and residents pursued litigation, mounted a campaign called the “Price is Too High” and through elections took control of the citizens board that governed the CDD to thwart the sale.

In 2018, the parent of Avatar Properties Inc., the huge developer AV Homes Inc., was purchased in a $1 billion deal by Taylor Morrison Homes Corp.

Taylor Morrison Homes Corp. withdrew the offer to sell the amenities but Solivita lawyers had learned by then how the $73 million sale price had been calculated.

Solivita’s lawyer, Andersen, said lawsuit documents showed that the $73 million figure was what Avatar considered to be the current value of 30 years of club membership fee revenue.

That disclosure led to a fuller understanding of what the club membership fee was – profit not tied to operations and maintenance and thus illegal under Florida law, Andersen said.

Anderson and his firm now are waging a similar lawsuit on behalf of the Bellalago community in Osceola County. The developer is Taylor Morrison.