All Attorney Client Privilege

August 08, 2003

By Cecelia Taylor
Copyright AHRC News Services

A couple of us went to a board meeting about a year and a half ago. In that board meeting the conversation was about a repair that was being done to the Association. This was a defect in the stucco throughout the project.

There was also a conversation going on about different homes having plumbing issues especially with the bath tubs. The Management company representative butted into the conservation and stated that the tubs were isolated issues and the homeowners needed to take care of them - even though it was a problem with the tubs installation. - These should have been reported to the builder.

When the Board again started talking about the stucco, the Management Representative again stated that this was a problem that the Association needed to take care of and not the builder. I butted in then and asked, “How many of the doors have this stucco problem under the thresholds? And, how many of these doors are you repairing?” The Management Representative then stated, “All of them.” I again asked, “So you are doing this under every front door and sliding glass door in the complex?” Her answer was “Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

I told her, “Yes I have a problem with this. You all just told me that the tubs were isolated incidents and that is the reason that you did not go to the builder with that problem. If this repair is being done on every single door in the complex, how can you possibly not go to the builder with this one? It is obviously not and isolated incident.”

Here is the answer from the combined efforts of the Association Management Company, NN Jaenske and Peters and Freedman, the attorneys that the Association had at the time as represented by Dawn Braddy of NNJJ. “That is attorney client privilege!”

So my next question was, “If this is an attorney client privilege item, why is it being discussed in open session? What about this is privileged when you are openly discussing the cost, manner and need for this in open session?” There was no answer to this question and the subject was changed. I called my attorney and he questioned the need of having a general repair done to the complex. I called Pardee the Builder of the complex and their statement to me was, “That is odd. We are doing just that repair on a similar project just across the interstate from you." He laughed and said that was nice of us to be taking care of this for them.

Don’t you think that it is interesting that the Management company was the company doing the repair? And we paid them over $17,000 to do this. Of course, we had enough money in our reserves to pay for this .... Let’s see now. Just do a short recap of these facts here:

1. Every single door in the complex needed to be repaired.

2. The management company had the maintenance agreement.

3. The management company is a contractor for very many of the builder’s new complexes.

4. The Builder should be responsible for major repairs that are a defect on the buildings for a period of 10 years.

5. The complex was only 6.5 years old when the repair was started.

6. Reserve funds were being used up to make repairs the builder may have been responsible for.

7. And by the way this is ALL ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGE!

I ran for the board. I won with another person who was just as astonished about this as I was. It took us 6 months but we fired the attorney and the management company quit as soon as they found out that we won.

Their words were something like they regretted to inform us that they did not think they could work with the new board. I think my grandchildren’s reaction to this would be “DAH!”