California condo parking dispute ends after decade; court rejects $292,544 legal fee claim

A dispute over a single parking space in an Orange County condominium complex has ended with a clear legal winner and an unusually expensive lesson. WCST Enterprises, the owner of Unit 38, successfully proved that it owned garage space 38G-a, the half of a two-car garage that its neighbour Berit Ling had used for roughly two decades. Yet the California Court of Appeal affirmed a ruling that WCST could not recover the $292,544 in attorney fees it sought after winning the case, reported Laws.com and Justia U.S.

Law.The decision, issued on September 28, 2026, in WCST Enterprises, LLC v. Ling, is about far more than one inconveniently numbered garage bay. It explains that winning a property dispute does not automatically make the losing neighbour responsible for the winner’s legal costs.

In California, a party must still identify a statute or contract that authorises a fee award, and the court found that WCST had not done so.The case began with documents recorded in the 1960s and grew into three appeals, two trials and a fight that consumed nearly ten years.