Lawsuit Conclusion and Findings

After a long and arduous process, the lawsuit brought against SLPPOA by Suzanne Star, Sabine Shurter and Barbara Van Ruyckevelt, back in February 2015, has reached a conclusion.

We now have a court finding that the Association is correctly following its Bylaws by not releasing personal information that is requested. Our Bylaws stand as the primary governing document and the new Home Owners Act does not invalidate them. The main points are outlined below in the Conclusions of Law.
We also see the benefit of the better defined HOA “financial and other records”, which restricts the information available for request, outlined below in the Conclusions of Law, to help prevent malicious requests for financial information from many years past.

Now the Association is protected from coercion and misdirection from individual members striving to bend the will of the Association to their bidding.
Our legal counsel sent out:
“We won all of our arguments except that Judge Davis did not find a basis upon which to award attorney's fees …….
The Judge was straightforward and to the point on his findings of fact against Star, et al.  Most findings were verbatim from ours.”

Total cost to the Association is nearly $28,000. This does not include volunteered time and effort, time-from-work, gas and meals, and emotional depletion. Not one dollar has been submitted for reimbursement of personal expenditures.

With our legal counsel, we are hoping we can recover the mediation costs [because it was court-ordered] as prevailing party recoverable costs [not attorney's fees].  We are gathering the total of filing fees.  Under the statute on "recoverable costs" [Rule 1-054(D)(2)] there will be some expenses that should be recouped.  This is being prepared by legal counsel.

The whole legal process should have stopped at Mediation, over a year ago, but Ms. Star et al were allowed to amend the complaint to take it to trial. Now the greater cost to the Association in legal fees, for the most part, will not be recoverable under this Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law.

Therefore it is very important to the Association that the members become involved and remain engaged and that a full ballot each year is voted on by a quorum of the membership. That is why voting is very important for everyone. Return those ballots!

Let us learn from our history of Sierra los Piῆos, that the quality of life in SLPPOA definitely depends on who is sitting on the Board of Directors. It is a thankless job that needs to be done, ceaselessly.

See attached findings.