Friday, March 4, 2011

Sand Lake Hills Homeowners Association Is Dead!

It has just been made public - the years-long legal battle against property owners in the Dr. Phillips neighborhood in Orlando is over!

According to the plaintiff, a ruling has been passed down against the homeowners association, ultimately putting an end to their abuse of the legal system - the Sand Lake Hills Section 2 homeowners association saught to rewrite and enforce the covenants and restrictions for all the surrounding neighborhoods, despite lacking any documentation to prove they had the authority or legal basis to do so.

Board members of the the HOA, who failed to even meet the requirements set forth in the Articles of Incorporation filed with the state, restricted access to the general membership meetings, holding it in secret locations and notifying only a small percentage of affected homeowners.  They also utilized unverified proxy votes to establish quorum and change the bylaws to give them unlimited power, such as levying assessments and fees on the membership at will - they even violated a software license from defense contractor Lockheed Martin to collect those proxy votes.

In addition, they had even convinced the county government to threaten a rabbi with fines for having religious meetings in his home - a case the county lost, costing tax payers thousands of dollars and loads of embarrassment.

That's not even the half of it!

This victory will definitely put a dent in the business of law firm Larsen and Associates, who represent numerous Central Florida homeowners associations with the same amount of legal ambiguity.  The law firm appeared to take liberty with the law to try and drum up business , after all, if you force every homeowner to pay fees and assessments, you will need a lawyer to enforce those new rules and litigate homeowners who choose not to pay - the Sand Lake Hills board of directors was fond of threatening legal action against "delinquent" accounts.

More news regarding this issue will come in the future...

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