sabotoge by former board members

I am a member of a board that has an email service owned by a former board member,we notice that our email correspondence is being leaked to homeowners. W e are in the process of switching to another service in the meantime. I am the president can i call a special meeting to shut this service down and start anew one? I have to keep asking for financial and email addresses of homeowners from 2 board members who were on the previous board. How do i handle this?

To strictly answer your question, yes you can call a special meeting for just about anything and yes you can vote to change the services that the association employs at any time. However for the reasons just discussed I would recommend establishing a comprehensive policy concerning the use of email. It won't be good enough to say that all email is private and cannot be disclosed because in most cases that's not true.

Depending on the state and your bylaws it might be permissible for the board to conduct business by email. Some states allow it to be used to vote on issues where there is unanimous consent or for emergencies. Other states require auditory participation (i.e. in person or conference call). You really should start there before deciding on whether or not to even try to re-establish an email system.

That being said I have to go with Mary here and recommend against using email for most board work. It's OK to use it for informational matters but you have to be very careful about what is said. Email is considered to be a business record. Each email is the same as a physical letter and is supposed to be retained in the records of the association.

This presents a couple problems. First, we tend to be more casual in email than in a written letter. Things are said that really ought not be. I've seen some real doozies like "the crabby lady called up whining about the landscapers. She must be off her meds again." Second, depending on the matter being discussed it may not be a privileged record in the first place. In other words, while the messages are being leaked in a dubious manner, the association members may very well have a right to have copies of them. In order for a discussion to be privileged it really needs to be done in person where the board votes to go to executive session and the minutes properly reflect that. It's much harder to make that distinction in email. Contrary to popular belief, copying the board attorney on an email does not automatically confer privilege.

As to the email addresses themselves, unless there's some kind of written agreement you're probably out of luck. If the association owns the domain and pays the hosting bills then you have a case. On the other hand if the board members have been corresponding using Yahoo and Gmail accounts or if a past board member ran it on his system as a favor it will be much harder for the association to assert an ownership interest.