Because anyone can sue anyone for anything, you won’t find many associations that haven’t been sued by someone for something. You can’t make your community litigation-proof. But there are steps you can take to reduce your litigation risks.

The best place to start is with the maintenance of common areas. Maintenance is one of the primary responsibilities of community associations. Allegations that the board has failed to fulfill those obligations underlie many – and perhaps most - of the suits owners file against them. To avoid those suits, boards should:

A long-time resident is showing early signs of dementia. She forgets to bring in newspapers and doesn’t always recognize people she knows. A neighbor found her recently standing in the hallway, unable to remember which unit was hers. The problems are intermittent; most of the time, she seems fine. We think her symptoms will worsen with time, but she insists she doesn’t need help and her children agree.

In a recent court decision, the Massachusetts Superior Court agreed with MEEB that a unit owner could not avoid paying an assessment because they didn’t use a portion of the common areas. In Gaab, et al. v. Board of Trustees of Townhomes at Beecher Place Condominium Trust, the owners of a unit filed a lawsuit asking the judge to declare that they have no obligation to pay any portion of an assessment to cover the costs of foundation repairs and earthwork needed to stop one of the condominium buildings from sinking. 

A member of our board is not a team player – to say the least. He regularly bad mouths decisions with which he disagrees, encourages owners to complain about the decisions and even to remove the trustees who supported them. One board member thinks we should vote to remove him. Is that an option?

“This is a disgusting mess?” How many parents have said that about a teenager’s room? The number who have not said it would no doubt be considerably smaller – probably close to zero. But in this case, the comment was coming from a condominium manager, who was describing the living room of an owner she thought was a “hoarder.” A parent can tell a teen, “Clean your room or else.” Dealing with an owner (“my home, my castle”) is obviously more complicated; dealing with a hoarder is several orders of magnitude more complicated still.

Our condo board does not always meet the quorum required to make decisions at board meetings.

Looking ahead to opening our pool for the summer -- and hoping to avoid the perennial complaints about children who misbehave (and often pee) in it -- our board is considering rules that would establish adult-only swim times, create a ‘lap’ lane’ open only to adults  and bar children who are not yet potty-trained.  Will these rules accomplish our goal?

Say what? That is how many condominium trustees and owners have reacted to the notice informing them of their obligation as building owners to report the energy usage in their buildings by June 30. For many recipients, there were two surprises in this notice: That this reporting requirement exists and that trustees or apparently random condominium owners are considered to be “owners” of their buildings. We will explain both.

First, the reporting requirement stems from a state law (“An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind, Large Building Energy Reporting”) enacted in 2022, requiring all buildings larger than 20,000 sq ft. to report their consumption of energy of all kinds. That law takes effect this year.

The Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has issued regulations clarifying the reporting requirements. Those regulations define building owners as “the person, persons, entity, or entities listed in the Covered Buildings List” that DOER has compiled from public records. For condominiums, the department has often identified trustees or individual unit owners as the “owners” who are responsible for ensuring that the required information is reported and subject to penalties if it is not. Don’t panic. DOER has established procedures for correcting its list.

When Boston and Cambridge enacted “right-to-charge” ordinances in 2019 and 2022, respectively, codifying the rights of electric vehicle owners to install charging stations in multi-family buildings, industry executives predicted that Massachusetts lawmakers would eventually follow suit. They were right.

In our overly litigious society, it is said that anyone can sue anyone for anything. The volunteers serving on condominium association boards sometimes feel as if they can be sued by almost everyone for almost everything – an overstatement, perhaps, but an understandable one. It is certainly true that condo owners are not always happy with the decisions boards make and it is also true that some owners express their dissatisfaction with board members by suing them.