Lawyer at HOA meeting
A member of our community went to an HOA meeting. I have yet to go as there hasn’t been any since COVID. She was saying the president brought a lawyer with him and when a question was asked he confided in the lawyer. Is this something they at AZ HOA Meeting. I’ve been on HOAs in FLA and have never heard of anything like this. The HOA board then asked the member to leave as they had business they needed to discuss. Again, I’ve never heard of such.
Thank you.
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Angela,
Under Arizona law the association board can go into executive session to get legal advice from an attorney, there are only five reasons allowed for executive sessions and they must limit any discussion to those issues. They have the right to exclude all homeowners from those sessions. They must announce before going into executive session which of the five reasons they are discussing in that session. There is nothing in law that allows the board to take any action in these sessions and in fact because of this, they are prevented from taking any action without providing the homeowners an opportunity to speak before their vote on any matter.
Dennis
I just spoke with the Arizona ETHICS HOTLINE. They confirmed…. we can record this attorney all day long, without his foreknowledge or approval — as long as we are not attorneys ourselves. And I am not an attorney. There is an ethics thing about attorneys recording other attorneys. I get that. But that is not the case here. AZ is still a one-party consent state.
It’s really sad that our HOA and our HOA Attorney engage in such tactics, misrepresenting AZ law, and thereby remove their right to record open HOA meetings. Lucky for me, others recorded the whole thing, so we have it on tape.
Sounds like a perfect case for the ADRE, eh, Dennis?
Fish 7,
Exactly as I had stated. There is a reason why I named this website HOATruth.com, you will not get the truth anywhere else. Unfortunately, the ADRE process is limited to violation of only specific Arizona law contained in either the condominium act or the planned community act, they have no authority to address any other law violation relative to HOA’s or Condominiums. This issue would not fall under their jurisdiction.
The next time the attorney attempts to make this claim don’t bother with an ADRE petition, immediately challenge the attorney and ask him if he is willing to risk his license to practice law in this state based on his intentionally misrepresentation of the law to his client. Remind him of the single party laws and the specific laws relative to recording of association meetings. He will back down, but if he does not than immediately file a complaint to the AZ Bar Association against this attorney. By the way, that will be a useless exercise because the Bar is nothing by a good ol-boys club. But it will get his attention.
Dennis
Dennis
Thank you, Dennis…. I’m not sure I follow your argument that it doesn’t fall under the ADRE jurisdiction. ARS 33-1804A states “shall not preclude such audiotaping or videotaping by those attending, unless the board audiotapes or videotapes the meeting and makes the unedited audiotapes or videotapes available to members on request without restrictions on its use as evidence in any dispute resolution process”. Our board President expressly made certain members turn off their recording devices in order for the meeting to proceed. And the board did not record it and then offer unedited recordings available. Why would that not be considered a violation of ARS 33-1804A?
Fish7,
You are exactly correct this would be a direct violation of ARS 33-1804 and able to be part of a petition to ADRE. I never said that this particular subject matter was not under the jurisdiction of ADRE or the ALJ as you can see in the above chain of comments. While I’ve identified other issues in other post what would not fit under the jurisdiction authorized for the ADRE dispute resolution process i did not state that this one was one of those issues. What I did say is that instead of filing a petition confront the attorney directly at the meeting and call him out on the issue. See if he’s willing to risk his ability to practice law based on his claim. I’m betting that you would get him to reverse his position and not have to have the association pay for the ADRE violation of the law.
Dennis
Got it! Thank you!