In Riverview Community Group v. Spencer & Livingstone, NO. 88575-3, the Washington Supreme Court held that an equitable servitude may arise by implication. The developer of a golf course complex and surrounding residential lots built in the 1980s sought to close down the golf complex and to plat the course into new residential lots. Some of the homeowners formed a community group for the purpose of maintaining the golf course as a permanent feature of the community, and sued to impose an equitable servitude and for injunctive relief.
The community group has organizational standing to bring these claims because the equitable and injunctive relief it requested did not require the participation of individual homeowners. The evidence offered by group, including the plat identifying the golf course and old advertisements, could support an equitable covenant limiting the use of the land as a golf course, if not in perpetuity then for a certain period of time. The dismissal of the community’s group’s complaint was reversed.