'Mistake' costs family its home at The Springs - Orlando Sentinel :
Here is a heartwarming story of judicial compassion, link forwarded by Fred Pilot via the HOAs Yahoo group:

SANFORD -- Because of someone else's mistake, Sharon Rousey lost her Longwood home at a courthouse auction two weeks ago over $1,200 in unpaid homeowners association dues. On Wednesday, she tried to persuade a judge to give it back. He refused. That means Rousey, 48, a single mom who is raising two disabled teenagers on a fixed income, must now pack up her belongings and get out...Rousey bought the 2,400-square-foot town house in The Springs, a gated community near Wekiwa Springs State Park, in May 2005. The home, though, came with a surprise: She would belong to two homeowners associations and, thus, had to pay two sets of dues, one for The Springs and another for Glenwood Village, the town-house neighborhood. She fell behind on both, according to court records...In November, Rousey thought she had solved her problems: Goodbye Foreclosure Inc., a Winter Park company that buys distressed properties, agreed to buy her house before the auction. It would pay off her homeowners association dues as well as her mortgage and leave her with about $115,000 in cash. But company Vice President Aaron Herschberg sent a check to an association -- the wrong one, it turned out -- and assumed the auction would be called off. It wasn't. On Dec. 5, an Apopka company that buys foreclosed property agreed to pay $113,500. Mark Lippman, Rousey's attorney, estimated the market value of her town house at $275,000 to $300,000.