Owners suing an HOA for legal expenses

Have not learned your lessons yet? Just lick your wounds and move on. Don't do the same thing again.

BTW: Suing your HOA is suing yourself and your neighbors... Do you want to keep proving this?

You should ask the homeowners exactly who they think the HOA is and who it consists of.

There's no need to be so condescending. Your attitude is typical of the "the Board is God" mindset we see so often.

In this case, for what it's worth, the HOA BOD denied an architectural application for something that it had approved for many other owners. It was a classic case of selective enforcement. The project was, in fact, a clear violation of the CCRs, but this was ignored in the case of the other owners, because of personal bias and favoritism. This was confessed in private conversation with one of the HOA board members.

The presence of selective enforcement practice negated the CCR's rule against the project. This was the court's finding.

Now the HOA board is suggesting to the rest of us that our annual fees may be increased to cover the legal costs of the lawsuit, and of course everybody is pissed.

To answer the question in the original post: sure, owners can sue for anything, but it's unlikely that they'd prevail.

To answer the post above: suing your HOA isn't necessarily suing yourself or your neighbors. It's suing an entity (often a corporation), and the damages may be paid by HOA funds or by insurance or others, such as a property manager or individual directors. Sometimes the remedy may involve "equitable relief"--forcing the HOA to do something, such as hold a fair election or stop harassing owners.

Suing an HOA is sometimes a necessary step to improve the HOA and ensure that it functions well.

Then sue the directors individually for breach of fiduciary duty. That's hard to do, but that's the route to take.

Anyone can use for anything, but winning the lawsuit and getting paid can be different issues. There's always a risk you might lose a lawsuit, which is why they should be The last resort. You also need to consider how far you want to go because if you do lose, you'll have legal costs and The judgement to pay out. As your community found out The hard way, The only people who usually win no matter what are The attorneys.

That doesn't mean legal action wasn't necessary. It could mean the board may have had a weak case to begin with and didn't listen to reason. Perhaps the association attorney tried to tell them this was a lost cause. Or the judge simply thought this owner had a better case. Some judges don't like HOAs no matter what The issue is and are likely to rule against them.

Since the HOA board oversees the association's affairs, this can mean authorizing legal action. That doesn't guarantee victory, and as long as they took spare action to handle the situation before resorting to a lawsuit, the homeowners probably won't have cause to hold them personally responsible for the legal expenses. Google business judgement rule for more information. In fact, you should be able to do that on this website and get some insight as to what it means.

As for the board, if the homeowners are honked off about this, nothing's stopping them from voting them out in the next board election of even doing a recall. Check your documents to see how that's done. However, you should be careful of uninterrupted consequences. If you wind up with a board that's afraid to pull the trigger and take necessary action because it may bacfire, they might not do much of anything, which won't help the association in the long run. Instead, look at the ARC process and see if it needs to be tweaked, such as being more specific on why a request is denied. Sometimes the decision is based on nonsense, not the documents.

If an owner sues a HOA and that results in a bad board shaping up, that can be a really good thing.

Say the legal fees that the HOA incurs are $50,000, and the damages paid by the HOA are $50,000, but the bad board shapes up, starts following the governing documents and the like, and the values of the properties in the HOA go up by $100,001, then suing the HOA resulted in owners being better off.

Is there a specific reason to be so rude?

Geno

I know Roger is not in Florida but if he were I would not agree with your interpretation except as it would apply to the plaintiff in the action--

Rogers question was: Question: The property owners are angry: "why should WE pay money because YOU screwed up and got sued?" Since the HOA was culpable, can the property owners sue the HOA for the additional assessment expense?

FS720.305 you quoted refers to "... a member prevailing in an action . . . ."

To me, the other members of the Association are not excused from being invoiced their pro rata share of an assessment created to recover the costs of the action.