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COURT RULING CREATES MORE LEGAL
FEES
By
Jan Bergemann
Published October 19, 2018
Wasn’t it already
difficult enough for owners to go after members of the
association board for violating laws and rules? Obviously not
for the First District Court of Appeals of the State of Florida!
By ruling that the
procedures in Florida statute Section
617.07401 applied to filing a lawsuit against the association,
they prolonged the process – and added additional legal fees to
the already costly procedure for owners to file a lawsuit.
The
requirement that a plaintiff must send a “demand“ for action by
the board and demonstrate that the board refused or ignored the
demand for at least 90 days before filing suit will just waste
more time and legal fees.
[See:
Iezzi v Edgewater]
Talking about injustice? Why is an association board given 90
days to remedy violations while an owner has only 30 days –
according to Florida statutes?
Equal rights? Definitely not in community associations!
I get
the distinct feeling that lower courts only too often try to
protect the “bad” guys!
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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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