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Imagine owning property that includes a private road that leads to the beach. What would you do if a nearby HOA wanted to have access to that private road so they could easily get to the beach? Would you be okay with it or refuse to let them on your property?
In this story, a few houses had access to the private road, but then an HOA president seemed to think his whole, huge HOA neighborhood should have access.
That was the end of it for the homeowner, and everyone ended up in court.
Keep reading for the whole story.
Lawyer destroys HOA!
One of my friends is a land use attorney who told me this story about a case of his.
Originally, there existed a small HOA with about a dozen houses in a coastal region.
About half of these houses (individually, not as part of the HOA) had easement rights through a neighbor’s property, to use a private road to access a nearby beach.
An HOA president ruined the private road access for everyone.
The problems started with a new development adjacent to the existing HOA, with over one hundred new houses.
The president of this new development’s HOA somehow got the idea that the smaller HOA had easement rights to access the beach (it didn’t) and proposed merging the two into a new, larger HOA that he thought would inherit these easement rights for everyone.
Well the neighboring property owner got sick of hundreds of cars, which had no right to be there, tearing up his private road. So, he dumped some giant logs across the road and blocked off access for everyone.
The president of this new HOA then sued the property owner on behalf of the entire HOA, forcing all homeowners to pay an assessment to cover the legal costs.
The original homeowners hired a lawyer.
Enter my lawyer friend who was hired by one of the original homeowners with legitimate easement access.
He wrote up a letter to the HOA president. This thing was about 50 pages long. It included maps, diagrams, county filings, easements, along with pointing out all the relevant laws and case laws.
Any possible arguments against his points were also brought up, along with the reasons why those arguments would fail.
In short, this was a completely ironclad explanation that what the HOA president was doing was incorrect.
Let’s see what the lawyer pointed out.
The main points were:
It was a handful of the original houses that had individual easement access
The original HOA itself did not have any easement access rights
Merging the new larger HOA with the original HOA does not mean the new houses inherited any rights
But wait, there’s more. Here’s the rest of the list…
Spending the HOA’s money on this lawsuit is illegal, because it doesn’t benefit all of the homeowners equally (some of the original houses had actual easement rights and therefore should not have to pay for any lawsuit)
The manner in which the new HOA was formed was never done properly in the first place, and could be dissolved by the courts
What did the HOA president do? Ignored all of this and continued with the lawsuit.
Wow! It ended really badly for the HOA president!
This ended up with another lawsuit against the HOA president personally by the original homeowners, who also filed to dissolve the HOA completely.
This meant none of the houses could be assessed for legal bills, making the HOA president personally liable for all the legal bills for both lawsuits, which he lost.
As a result, the (former) HOA president went bankrupt and was forced to sell his house and move out of the neighborhood.
I feel bad for the homeowner with the private road. It had to be annoying having so many people want access.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This is funny but not wrong!
Another person loved the story.
Here’s some more praise.
Could this story scare off potential HOA board members?
That HOA president really messed up and paid the price! I bet he really regretted his life choices after that.