Escaping condo jail
Realty Times
Written by: Benny L. Kass
15 August 2017

Question:
The president of our condominium association acts alone and has previous members of the board on the bank account of the Association. He has been on the board for over 3 years. He harassed all the secretaries and treasurers that had been elected by the unit owners.

The President doesn't have meetings with the board or include them in any decisions for different projects, nor does he let the treasurer handle the money. He decides what projects he wants to do and he works on the projects than he pays himself. He also is a custodian/ janitor and he pays himself a $800 per month.

Please we need help. Where should we report, without hiring an Attorney. I am the current secretary for the association but the President doesn't even talk to us. He buys apartments from owners that are behind with the Association dues, he owns five apartments in a 20 unit building and he comes at the meetings with his votes plus with proxy votes from the unit owners that are renting their units.

Answer:
My first reaction was: You gotta be kidding; this was a ‘false news' email. But then I remembered reading "Escaping Condo Jail", by Sara Benson and Don DeBat, so my next reaction was "welcome to the wonderful world of condo living".

Are you the only one concerned about this? Have you talked with other owners to see if you could mobilize a group that would start to challenge the President? Have you advised the absentee owners of these problems so they would no longer give the President their proxy?

The best approach, in my opinion, is to try to "throw the rascal" out of office. Your Bylaws contains the procedure for recalling an elected board member. Keep in mind that the board can terminate an officer but only the unit owners — in the percentage of vote required by your legal documents—can remove a director.

If you can prove even only half of the facts in your question, there is a strong case that the President is breaching his fiduciary duty to the association.

So why don't you want to get an attorney? A lawyer can help, and I suspect that most lawyers would relish filing a suit against the President.

Contact the Community Association Institute (caionline.org). That's a national association that represents community associations all over the country. There are local chapters, and you will get some names of local attorneys who practice community association law. I strongly recommend you talk to a lawyer as soon as possible.

You are the secretary of the board. You also have a fiduciary duty to the association, and in my opinion, that duty requires you to take immediate appropriate action to remove the President—either by vote of the membership or by court order.

Benny L. Kass
Author of the weekly Housing Counsel column with The Washington Post for nearly 30 years, Benny Kass is the senior partner with the Washington, DC law firm of Kass, Mitek & Kass, PLLC and a specialist in such real estate legal areas as commercial and residential financing, closings, foreclosures and workouts.


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