Great question Riggio, hope all is well with you. The easy answer is money. This is a suit that has been near on 15 years in the making. There's been countless small contributors that have donated, most of the time on the promise they would be rewarded with some kind of monetary compensation. Lord knows a goodly number of those who donated have moved on or died. Seems to me, if you read the complainants allegations, the bulk of them are baseless. Not listing the PIF dollar figure on the Facilities Agreement is nonsense, and that is what a number of them are. Several are for charges/changes that might happen, and again, that is just silliness. Where there might be an issue is regarding the change from a per person payer to a per property assessment. And i say might, because this ultimately comes down to this basic argument: Does Sun City have the right to establish and enforce community documents? To me, that answer is simply yes. The potential for relief is more than just financial, the judge could award something beyond that; for example saying Sun City is in fact a Planned Community and going forward should operate under Tittle 33 of the AZ statutes. The tragedy of all of this is we have effectively sued ourselves. And for anyone who has watched it, you have to appreciate it became something more than just a lawsuit, but a personal vendetta, where the end game was to get even. Whether the day in court ever nets anything will become clear in the coming months (though i suspect if the RCSC were to lose it, they would appeal), the reality is we have all lost due to the suit. Sadly, that is the reality of lawsuits that are driven by emotion and ego.
I wonder would the RCSC appeal on any loss or would they accept a partial loss, like Title 33 designation. Or does Title 33 mean they also need to return some of money and so they can not even accept that? I've tried to read the Title 33 specs on condominium inclusion but the information is not easy to understand, it's quite long, which is probably the reason they are hoping to slant the language in their favor. Here a link to it if you care to dive in. Scroll to Chapter 9 That might not even be the correct place to look for what they will hope to clarify.
Have those long term residents you spoke to considered any of the points are valid? Are any of them paying double/getting half value for their annual RCSC fee? I imagine they are grandfathered in to that. Have they looked at the advantages of Title 33? If not then they might be speaking based on not liking the agression of the filer. Much of the suit does seem exaggerated. But I think its wrong to say it's completely baseless. Some of this is because of the board have not listened to residents. Yes they have improved some items, like videotaping the meetings but they now can go to court and say they do allow it. It's a rather small thing but without title 33 they could stop it at anytime and say it caused problems. And none of us could do anything about it. That's not fair to the community. It's too much power to act without listening to the community.
Beyond the potential of the suit, there is no question the attorneys representing the plaintiffs will be asking their fees be paid by the RCSC. The reality is the group bringing the suit barely had enough money left in the bank to pay them to get the case headed towards court. It is an interesting to note, the reverse side of the coin won't be in play. Should the judge find the RCSC did nothing wrong, we won't have the luxury of asking the plaintiffs or their attorneys to pay our significant court costs. Too bad, because it would make ambulance chasers think twice about frivolous suits.
Insurance only covers the costs if the lawsuit relates to an insurable event, which is not the case here. Every member of Sun City is paying the legal costs to defend the lawsuit, including any damage awards.
True! But, consider that perhaps the advice the RCSC received from their legal council is at least partly responsible for some of the complaints -- eg, that the quorum was 'mandated by law to be 10% of the membership' when in fact the rest of the statute said 'unless the bylaws stated something different', which is what the bylaws said. I am inclined to question whether the lawyers actually said that to the board, but that's the justification the board used at the time. As EL said, both sides behaved badly.
Life in my mind is almost always filled with teachable moments. There's a link i posted on here regarding the Sun City West Organization for Open Government. It rose up back in the late 90's and one of the reasons we didn't buy in SCW. There was too much turmoil and too much of an unknown factor with the problems they were facing. The teachable moment comes from what the community did to resolve the problems. After a contentious election, the new board enacted bits and pieces of Title 33 in an effort to placate those who felt there were changes needed. Any threats of future litigation was dropped in an effort to stabilize the community. Governance became more open and the community was the better for it. Fast forward to 2011 and when elected to the board i brought forward the idea we should embrace following a similar path. Board members were aghast and the GM saw little or no value. Like many of my suggestions, they died a quick and quiet death. To this day, i wonder if we had taken those steps to be more open, would be where we are today?
