My dog ate the meeting minutes?

I'll relate a true story. The Secretary, in order to save physical space, was digitizing the records. Once the digitized record was verified, the Secretary shredded the paper copy. Unfortunately, prior to making a backup of the digital records, their hard drive crashed and all records were lost. What records the Association was able to put together came from personal records of prior Directors.

In my previous Association, the secretary asked the board for permission to go through the records and dispose of anything more than x (I don't know the exact number) years old, again to save physical space. The Board approved the request. The year after the records were disposed of, a new Director pointed out that the applicable corporate law specifies that minutes need to be kept forever. Again, some records were able to be recreated from personal files of past Directors.

What I'm saying is that people are human and things happen that shouldn't. Nobody wants 4 or 5 boxes of files being stored in their house that may or may not always be in the way. Realistically, few people make regular backups of data until they actually lost data.

What would happen in court?

Minutes document the actions of the board. Without those minutes, the Association would be in a you say, I say situation making it harder for them to win a case where minutes were needed.

In your situation, the Court would likely scold them for not keeping minutes. You may or may not be able to win reasonable attorney fees and court costs. The court could rule that any major decision was invalid as there is no proof things were done correctly. The court may rule that the Association is no longer a legal entity (Association, Inc.) which could cause more headaches for the individual members.

What is it you actually want to achieve?
It is possible that there is a better way than the courts to achieve it.

Keep in mind that the "Association" is created by the CC&Rs.

The Corporation, a legal entity, is created by the States Corporation Commission.

If the legal entity was removed, it would be similar to being administratively dissolved for failing to file the annual report.
The Corporation no longer exists, but the Association does continue to exist.

If the corporation no longer existed, if something happened on the common area resulting in legal action, the only legal entities to bring that legal action against would be each individual owner (and a lawyer would have no issue having each owner served with legal action). Each owner would have to independently respond to the legal action vs. just having the Association deal with the issue.

That said, it appears that TX has a section of the corporate code dealing with unincorporated nonprofits (i.e. your Association). Therefore, the above example would not apply in TX. see: Chapter 252 of the Texas Business Organizations Code

BillD16 I'm also in a texas association dealing with a lot of problems and similar questions to you. I made a group but it wasn't strong enough and members of the group chickened out. So

1) I'm going to rebuild the group stronger and the HOA board is going to be getting all certified letters from our group signed by lots of people
2) We are going to meeting organized with pre-written questions and demands to say to all members and the board
3) We are going to demand all our rights under Texas law - examine records, audits, full minutes and record of decision on file, open board meetings, get permits for all construction work, expose and end retaliation, regular elections, and also we just learned that they have to share the owners list and email list of owners.
4) I'm seriously considering hiring an attorney to write all our letters and stuff. Especially if I can find a few members of our group to share the cost.
5) Our group is also going to draft up a full agenda of what we will do when our group members get on the board, new way of tracking maintenance, new rules, new parking policy, plus bylaws we are going to implement to end the things we don't like.