A dispute that began with a contested assembly ended up in the Constitutional Court, which separated what corresponds to a judge of protection from what must be resolved by the ordinary jurisdiction
SANTO DOMINGO. – The Constitutional Court (TC) put an end, through its Judgment TC/0684/26, of July 27, 2026, to a litigation that pitted a group of owners of the Residencial Estrella Marina, in La Romana, against the Neighborhood Board that manages the complex for more than a year.
The file, identified as TC-05-2026-0032, summarizes a conflict that combines two very different types of claims, one about the internal governance of the owners' association, and another about the surveillance and public exposure of the residents.
The origin of the case dates back to the election assembly held in March 2025 and the vote for a new board in April of that year, chaired by Samir Zorob Jiménez.
A group of owners, led by David Matos, Ana Teresa Kelly, Luis Yan Carlos, Damaris Altagracia Solano Guzmán and others, questioned the legitimacy of that process and filed an injunction seeking, among other things, the dissolution of the board of directors, the organization of a new election process and the cessation of the measures to collect maintenance fees, including the requirement for delinquent owners to lift the access barrier to the residential complex themselves, and the suspension of the solid waste collection service.
These complaints were joined by another, of a different nature: the accusation that the board had installed a monitoring center with audio and video cameras, as well as drones, to monitor the interior of the homes, and that it published on social networks audios, videos and photographs of the owners who were behind on their maintenance payments.
The Second Chamber of the Civil and Commercial Court of First Instance of the Judicial District of La Romana granted the injunction in August 2025, declared the March assembly irregular, and ordered the organization of new elections, among other measures. The Neighborhood Association appealed that decision to the Constitutional Court for constitutional review.
The court divided the case in two. Regarding the dissolution of the board and the validity of the assembly, it concluded that these were matters of ordinary legality, outside the jurisdiction of a judge of constitutional protection, and declared that part of the action inadmissible, thereby revoking the lower court's ruling in its entirety.
Regarding the cameras, drones, and the publication of debts, however, the court granted the injunction, considering that these practices violated the rights to privacy, honor, and good name of the owners, and ordered the Neighborhood Council to cease them immediately, under a penalty of two thousand Dominican pesos for each day of non-compliance.
The decision was approved by majority vote at the plenary session of the Constitutional Court held on June 8, 2026, with the absence of magistrates Fidias Federico Aristy Payano and Sonia Díaz Inoa, who did not participate in the deliberation for reasons provided for by law, and with the dissenting vote of magistrate Alba Luisa Beard Marcos, whose content is not part of the body of the notified sentence.
The Estrella Marina case thus stands as an example of the two fronts on which a conflict can unfold within a Dominican residential complex: one of internal governance, which must be resolved before the ordinary courts and under Law No. 122-05, and another of fundamental rights, when the measures of a board of directors enter into the private lives of the owners.
The first of these fronts also refers to Law No. 5038 on Condominiums, of November 21, 1958, which El Inmobiliario reviewed in September 2023 with the advice of lawyer Héctor Aliés Rivas, and which continues to be the legal framework to which the owners of a residential complex must turn when the dispute is, in essence, about coexistence and internal administration, and not about a fundamental right that has been violated.
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