contacting owners to repair damages they caused

Fred

I would make owner information available then back off. It is an owner to owner (likely via insurance companies) situation. It is not a BOD issue.

Owners have a right to see association records such as name and address, so that should be provided. I would have no problem providing emails and phone numbers as well. (The alternative is to pass messages back and forth, but why bother?)

You are right that there are common element areas involved, so the association should see that it is taken care of. I disagree with those who say to stay out of it. It is not just an owner to owner problem, although the association can limit itself to concerns of the common elements.

How do you know the upstairs owner is liable? Maybe the tenant did something negligent and you have to go after the tenant. Maybe the owner did not do anything to make him/her liable. Many people think that if a leak starts in an upstairs unit, that the upstairs owner is automatically liable, but that is not usually the case. Your upstairs owners may be quite correct to not offer to pay any damages or to contact anyone.

I actually mentioned this quite recently to Jeff in a different thread: In our urban high rise HOA and those HOAs that neighbor us, Owners are responsible IF it's shown that their personal property or residents' behavior caused damage to other units or common areas.

In Fred's case, I think others are correct. The Owners' insurance companies need to duke it out.

IF, however, the condo's clogged AC unit causes damage to the common areas, our HOA does the following: repairs the common area and bills the Owner. If the Owners or their insurance do not pay, we remove recreational common area privileges from the unit (per our CC&Rs). We've never had to go beyond that.

In a recent case, an Owner's employees dumped a great deal of balcony-mopping water that splattered and messed up several floors newly washed windows below (which only can be done from the exterior, so the HOA pays to clean them). We did not charge the Owner the usual fine, $100, but did charge him $875 for the window washers returning & using our swing stage equipment to redo several windows.

Whatever the issue, In CA, Owners' privacy is protected and I doubt that we (our PM) would ever give one Owner the phone # or email addy of the other.

I agree with JeffT2. Pursuant to the law on record viewing, association records, including owners' contact information, are supposed to be accessible to any HOA member. My HOA requires members to sign that they will not use this information for harassment. But one owner contacting another about damages the second owner's lack of care caused is not harassment. I would argue a Board even has a fiduciary duty to assist owners in resolving these issues. As some here have already pointed out, this is about property values.

Typically a HOA's governing documents also have statements about one owner not being a nuisance to another owner. "Nuisance" is discussed at length in case law. The scenario Fred describes sounds like it is a nuisance, or very close to one, to me. Often the governing documents add that one member has a right to take legal action against another for violations of the covenants. This is even more justification for a HOA providing contact information of one member to another member.

If the governing documents have a procedure for complaints and enforcement, the members whose units are being damaged could consider submitting a complaint of nuisance to the Board and, where the governing documents allow, ask for enforcement. Granted the two members' insurance companies may have to duke it out on the costs here, but this is separate from a Board requiring one member not to be a nuisance to another member.

Fred's board could ask the HOA attorney about this. I would include all of the elements I describe above in the question to the attorney.

Fred

If there is damage to common areas, the BOD should become involved. The advice not to become involved is if it is only a neighbor to neighbor situation.

FredB4 Ohio : IF the damage or loss itself would trigger corporation master insurance for common element and/or basic unit damage, your issue respectfully is not about disclosuring personal data.

It would be about who makes what insurance claim to whom & who will suck up the insurance deductible ? A good approach is whether the loss is an insurable loss; if so whose policy ? ; can we slope-shoulder the deductible lawfully anywhere else ?

You need to fit damage facts into whatever your state laws & governance documents classifies this sort of loss. As noted above mere first time damage occurring isn't necessarily blameworthy, but insurers may be allowed to subrogate or recover the payout (after making the victims whole ) unless your jurisdiction bars subrogation. ( A way to circularly keep payout costs within a community )

Respectfully you need to also check how your jurisdiction handles a corporation's scope to refuse to make a claim under its master policy, consequences of such - eg loss below deductible - & whether a valid deductible transferring by-law is in place.