Breach of fiduciary duties

My husband was talked into taking a board president position at our complex (14 units) soon after we moved in. We realized soon after moving in that there was excessive foot fall noise from the upstairs unit. The unit had been remodeled shortly before we purchased with wood flooring. Our HOA CC&Rs and architectural guidelines state that remodeling needs to be done by a licensed contractor and needs to meet STC and IIC specs (58 etc). My husband realizing that his position put him in an awkward place to start an investigation into the flooring upstairs, recused himself as the board President. The owners upstairs fought getting a sound test done for a year and half necessitating a legal plethora of everyone (HOA, us and the upstairs owners) hiring lawyers. Here we are close to almost half a million dollars spent on legal fees between all parties, they are now falsely accusing my husband of a number of things such as breach of fiduciary duties, economic interference, etc etc. We have two teams of lawyers (insurance and our own). There is no evidence for any of these claims but the owners upstairs want to get away from addressing their flooring mistake. Our investigation showed that their sound test did not pass the STC/IIC sound specs according to our Arch guidelines and their contractor was a general contractor and was not licensed to do flooring specifically for condos. The association dropped the lawsuit against the upstairs people because they didn’t want to spend any money and as a result the owners are now faced with paying legal fees to date to the upstairs people. Does anyone have any insight or advice?
We are pressing on with a nuisance lawsuit and enduring emotional distress. We are also planning to sue the association for negligence and not reinforcing the arch guidelines. Any advice or experience on this matter would be helpful.

Move? Never buy a condo again? I don't know why anyone would buy a condo, they are uniformly the worst.

A further comment about suing the association for failing to maintain the architectural guidelines:

How do you know they haven't been trying to enforce the guidelines? You don't unless the board confirms that it has or has not done so. Enforcement actions are typically confidential, so outsiders have no idea what is being done.

There are also real limits to what an association can do when faced with a stubborn owner (which is what it looks like the upstairs owner is). It may get down to needing to take the owner to court, and board members have to weigh the cost of doing so against all of the other needs of the community. There may not be enough funds available to fight a protracted battle, and the board may have limited themselves to what they can reasonably accomplish without foisting the added expense onto other homeowners who will not benefit from it. The fact that their action have not accomplished their goal does not prove negligence.

If you don’t have anything useful to say, keep it to yourself.

I’m not proposing anything. I’m asking for folks to share their experience if they have gone through something similar. Again if you don’t have any input that’s of help, no need to weigh in.

JohnT

Legally you might well be in a Condo but to me side by side units are Townhomes as in no other units in front, nor behind you. Not other units above nor below you.

In SC, multi story Condos fall under the SC Horizontal Property Act. Other type associations, townhomes, single family, duplexes, etc do not. They fall under Title 27, Homeowners Association Act. It mainly deals with what owners are entitled to get from the developers versus how to run their association. Title 27 has no teeth. It was feel good legislation at its best.

I am located in small HOA of 112 owners in Lexington SC. We are standalone, private, small patio homes. We have no amenities thus not a very complex HOA. Where are you?

I'm in Greer which is right outside of Greenville. We have a mixture of 144 single and two story condos as well as 21 patio homes. I've lived here almost 2 years and love the area. They've done a great job with downtown Greenville!

Maybe the board could fine the violator of the CC&Rs.
My board can fine $250 a day.