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COSTLY LITIGATION?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published August 24, 2018
As Eric pointed out on Monday Florida statutes have certain
requirements that demand that owners are notified if the
association gets involved in costly lawsuits that may require
that a special assessment is being levied in order to pay for
the cost of this litigation.
In my opinion another provision that is nothing but something
that was put into the statutes to make owners feel better –
without any real consequences.
Imagine this scenario: “A homeowners’ association sues one of
its members for violation of deed-restrictions, parking a big
pick-up truck in his drive-way.” After year-long
court-battles the appeals court ruled in favor of the homeowner
and awards legal fees. Being one of the owners of this
association you receive a letter telling you that you have to
pay a special assessment in the amount of $8,000.00 within 30
days. Thinking about it, you realize that you were never
informed by the association that they were getting involved in a
lawsuit that turned out to be that costly. Gee, didn’t the
association violate the Florida statute by not informing me
about this lawsuit?
You are correct, but what are you going to do: File another
costly lawsuit trying to convince a judge to agree that a
violation occurred that entitles you to be exempt from the
special assessment?
Remember: If you lose it will cost you a lot more than just the
amount you would have needed to pay the special assessment.
With other words: How useful are these provisions in the Florida
statutes supposedly protecting owners from paying for outrageous
litigation cost?
In my opinion you don’t need to be Einstein to figure that out
yourself!
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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