Peckham v. Milroy
Court of Appeals of Washington
17 P.3d 1256 (2001)
A restrictive covenant across the 41-block, roughly 1,600-lot Spokane Terrace Addition (STA) prohibited home businesses, though at least four such businesses operated in violation; after Thomas Milroy (defendant) and his family moved into his mother's STA home and remodeled it, his mother began operating a daycare there, prompting Gordon Peckham (plaintiff), a neighboring property owner already unhappy about the reconstruction and disruptive daycare-related traffic and noise, to inform her she was violating the covenant and eventually sue for an injunction after Milroy inherited the home. The trial court found Peckham had an equitable right to enforce the covenant and granted the injunction; Milroy appealed, arguing the covenant was abandoned due to other violations, that laches and estoppel barred Peckham's claim, and that public policy protecting home daycares overrode the covenant.
Whether a handful of scattered violations of a restrictive covenant in a large subdivision constitute abandonment of the covenant, and whether laches, estoppel, or public policy otherwise bar its enforcement against a homeowner's daycare business.