The board had sued a homeowner in 2022 over a shed, and the association lost at trial and again on appeal. Nobody had voted to approve the litigation, even though our bylaws clearly required a membership vote for anything over ten thousand dollars. When the reserve balance suddenly came in at negative ninety-one thousand dollars in 2024, the treasurer said it was because of “unanticipated legal expenses.” I requested the invoices because a hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars seemed impossible for a shed dispute that the association had already lost twice.
The attorney initially refused to give me the detailed invoices, saying they were protected by privilege. I paid three hundred dollars for my own lawyer to confirm that privilege didn’t automatically prevent a member from reviewing the association’s financial records. When the invoices finally arrived, the law firm had billed more than eleven hundred hours. Most of it appeared to be legitimate litigation work, but forty-one of the hours weren’t connected to the shed case at all. They were billed under a separate matter code, and every description used the same two words: “personal matter.”
I asked the attorney what those charges were, and he said he couldn’t discuss another client’s business. I reminded him that the association had paid the invoices, so I wanted to know why our money was being used for a separate matter. My lawyer subpoenaed the firm’s billing records, and that’s when we found the name attached to those forty-one hours. The “personal matter” was a divorce case involving the board president, and the association had been paying those legal bills every month while the same president was signing off on the invoices.
