Pahrump Valley Times - Nye County's Largest Newspaper Circulation: "Fifth District Judge Robert Lane late last week granted a defense motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Comstock Park Homeowners Association against a handful of board opponents.
The suit accused Carlo Verdi, Carol Curtis, David Connors, Leon and Delores Goss of defamation, libel, slander and fraudulent misrepresentation.
Plaintiff's attorney Evan Wishengrad, representing homeowner's association directors Paul Enck, Darryl Setzkorn, Harold 'Frank' Burfeind and Carol Volke, during a hearing before Judge Lane March 2, claimed the defendants went door to door in the mobile home park, accusing the board of embezzling money.
Language in the complaint also accused the defendants of disrupting homeowners' meetings and filing repeated complaints to the state ombudsman."
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These defendants were association members who were critical of the existing BOD. The BOD filed a lawsuit against them, claiming slander, etc. So the owners got themselves a lawyer who managed to get the entire suit dismissed on the grounds that the BOD didn't get the members' approval of the suit before filing it--as Nevada law requires.
Does the BOD's action here, in hiring a lawyer to sue members who criticized them, sound like they had the best interests of the association in mind? I mean, if they think they have been slandered as individuals, wouldn't the proper approach be to get their own attorneys to represent them as individuals, and at their own expense? Just wondering what people think.
4 comments:
This situation is consistent with the weak governance ethic in HOAs that blurs the line between directors as corporate officers and as individuals.
The directors should have sued personally and at their own expense. However, that is not the mentality of the typical HOA director who believes that he IS the HOA.
After we filed suit against our HOA in response to threats made by Board members, the Board members kept claiming "we've been sued" despite the fact that no individual was ever sued. These Board members really identify themselves with the HOA.
Our experience is that Board members are cowards that enjoy control and confrontation as long as they are the ones in controlling and delivering the threats. The HOA offers them the ability to do this while bearing no personal responsibility for their actions. Great grooming and breeding grounds for sociopaths who are inevitably attracted to these positions.
What I don't understand is why the management companies aren't stepping up. (Pause for laughter) Seriously, don't the mgmt people have professional licenses that supposedly show that they know how the association is supposed to be run? For that matter, don't the attorneys know the steps that should have been taken for a BOD to file this suit? Even if the BOD is full of idiots, the paid professional advisors should have known this case was a loser.
Oh, and to answer your question, yes, the BOD should have sued on their own, assuming that the complaint really was "replete with language about (how) this affected the personal lives and personal businesses of the board members." But I'm sure they thought they were just protecting everyone's property values. And besides, "They agreed that we could file this lawsuit when they decided to move here."
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