Category Archives: lawsuit

Huge Victory for California Homeowners!

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The California Supreme Court last week upheld a lower court decision which would essentially prevent the CAI (Community Associations Institute) from controlling the outcome of all board elections in Homeowners Associations.

Truly, the CAI has emerged as one of the nation’s most disgustingly evil-minded institutions. CAI claims it represents homeowners, although sometimes it refers to ‘stakeholders’. What CAI really represents is a massive and growing cash diversion from private homeowners to tort lawyers and service providers. When a homeowner gets into a beef with his or her HOA, CAI refers the case to its own secret closet of favored tort lawyers. But the ‘California dance’ by CAI was just beyond belief.

California’s Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that an HOA which takes a position or becomes an advocate for a certain board candidate or ballot measure must provide “equal access” to opponents. This includes access to any means of publication including HOA websites, bulletin boards, community meeting rooms, newsletters and any other publication routes. CAI lawyers, of course, went ballistic.

Equal access? Who the heck ever heard of such an outrage? Equal protection? That’s for U.S. citizens, certainly not the citizens of HOA Amerika.

Twenty four California law firms filed ‘Friends of the Court’ briefs to the California Supreme Court begging the justices to overturn that stinking ‘equal access’ judgment. Count ’em: Twenty four law firms, each one of them sucking at the teat of the HOA lawsuit machine.

For a very brief background on this lawsuit, the Beachwalk Homeowners Association board figured out a sneaky way to get CAI affiliated members elected to the board. If the CAI-guy didn’t win, they’d just keep holding elections one after the other, advocating all the way until the homeowners got weary and finally gave in to the constant political propaganda and elected the previously chosen CAI-guy. These 24 HOA law firms, by filing such Friends of the Court briefs, demonstrated they were absolutely behind such odoriferous tactics. Remember the old Soviet Union where voters could vote, but there was only one candidate on the ballot? Well, the CAI-guy election tactic was Communism on steroids.

In a strange turn to Constitutional fairness and due process, the California Supreme Court essentially ruled that opponents of in-house candidates or ballot issues actually got to have the freedom to discuss alternative views. Amazing!

Any homeowner who wonders where his or her HOA dues are going, or who wonders why Homeowners Associations have become so despised by individual homeowners, should read the decision in the California case: Wittenberg v Beachwalk Homeowner Association.

Calling all homeowners: You finally won a big one! Congratulations!

(click here for California decision)

http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/G046891.PDF

 

More On The Colorado Flood

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Now that I’m out of and away from the Colorado flood I’m watching aerial video of the damage. I’ve seen some bad disasters in my life, but nothing like this one. This single cloudburst caused damage across Eastern Colorado from the Wyoming border to the New Mexico border.

Colorado has about 8000 Homeowners Associations, many of them in eastern Colorado, right in the flood ravaged areas. At some point, all those HOA members are going to be told they don’t qualify for disaster relief since the federal government considers Homeowners Associations and co-ops to be non-profit private associations where ‘homeowners’ are actually shareholders or groups of investors in a neighborhood and its common areas. They can still apply for federal loans, but by living in an HOA they have removed themselves from the ability to get federal aid. 

Congress could change that, of course, but with the country facing sixteen trillion dollars of debt there’s a huge question as to whether the feds would change the rules. Perhaps China would help us? After all, we’re their biggest customer. All those COSCO container trucks and ships you see on the roads and the seas are owned by the Chinese government. The acronym stands for “China Ocean Shipping Company,” owned by the People’s Republic Of China.

Well, I’m going back to watching video feeds. A pretty good one is being hosted right now by the New York Times.

(click here for flood video feed)

 

A Wonderful Thought!

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This was sent to me by a friend of the Neighbors At War blog. I think it’s wonderful and describes perfectly what Homeowners Rights Advocates are up against!

Photo
’nuff said?
 
Ward Lucas
 

Florida HOA Kicked in its St. Augustine Grass!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings 

The good doctor and his wife really wanted to follow their HOA’s rules and regulations. They also wanted to keep harmful fertilizers out of the Intracoastal Waterway near Jacksonville. 
 
They filed the necessary paperwork for a “Florida Friendly” yard. After getting no response during the customary 30 day waiting period, they started their landscaping project.
 
Whoa! The official “HOA Double Standard” raised its ugly head in the form of a nasty lawsuit!
 
Dr. and Mrs. Sidle had followed all the HOA rules, but the HOA didn’t bother to follow its own. So, off to see the judge they went. The court ordered mediation and the HOA board gave complete representation to the mediator to settle the case. Everyone agreed and the couple planted all the approved flowers. They were even presented with the first-ever Gold Certified Florida Friendly Landscape Award in Duval County.
 
The problem? The HOA president didn’t like the mediator’s decision and demanded a full-blown trial!
 
Ultimately, the judge ruled in favor of Dr. and Mrs. Sidle. Sadly, the Sidles weren’t awarded their legal fees. And all their neighbors will undoubtedly get slammed with a special assessment to pay for the board’s arrogance and ignorance of Florida law.
 
No mention of the current board’s status, but I hope this board president gets booted into the Intracoastal Waterway with all that soggy St. Augustine Grass draped around his neck. The Florida Friendly Landscape Award sounds like a winner but this board president has proven himself to be a real loser!
 
 

Your Voting Rights Really Are At Risk!

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There’s no better homeowners rights advocate in the country than CalHomeLaw.org., in California. I wish they’d let me link directly to some of their blog posts, but they are a paid-only subscription website and I understand and respect that. In the meantime, I have to re-purpose some of their material, while giving them full credit.

CalHomeLaw.org has been vigorously lobbying against Internet voting for Homeowners Associations. The reason is obvious. The Homeowners Association industry is a wasps nest of fraud and once they get Internet voting passed, you and I as private property owners are toast.

Their latest blog cites www.verifiedvoting.org as an expert on what goes on in elections, public AND non-profit.

Now, imagine this scenario: In California, AB-1360 would allow the HOA industry to set up its own internet election equipment, count its own votes, and name the winners. There’s no paper trail, there’s no audit. Challenging election results will be absolutely impossible.

The HOA industry has poured massive amounts of money into trying to lobby for this bill and others like it.

Remember Las Vegas? Hundreds of millions of dollars were skimmed away from Homeowners Associations into the pockets of private law firms, police officials, political bigwigs, all based on the fact that phony ‘straw men’ were elected to HOA boards in completely fixed elections!

Dang it, Folks, this is ORGANIZED CRIME! This is the NEW MAFIA!

We’ve already seen gunfire break out in a number of Homeowners Associations across America. We’ve seen suicides, and we’ve watched thousands of people evicted from longtime homes. We’ve seen cases where a buddy of the HOA lawyer bought up the victim’s home at auction for pennies on the dollars a day after the foreclosure.

Heck, we’ve even seen cases where the HOA board auctioned off and then bought a homeowner’s house and put the money back in the HOA treasury! Talk about a conflict of interest!

This is ugly stuff gang, and it’s going on in neighborhoods all around the country, even in the town you thought was so benign and peaceful.

Organize Folks! Beat these criminals down at every possible chance. I’m not much of a bell-ringing alarmist, but I know this stuff is coming. I swear to you that we are in the very real situation where Constitutional rights we all thought we once had are being pulverized. When they’re gone, we have no way of getting them back.