Tom Ware: 0:00

I have seen situations where the bully, the person gains control, because they are a bully, and everybody's afraid to talk to them. Well, the problem with with that is that the if the bully is going to expose the association to liability, the minority director fully do have an fiduciary duty to stand up to him, to to actually do something, because otherwise, failure to do so is going to result, potentially result in liability to the corporation.

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Robert Nordlund: 0:46

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here today for episode number 145, with Tom ware, an attorney from the prominent Southern California law firm of Kulik Gottesman Siegel and Ware. You don't have to memorize that, but that's part of the program. Tom and I have known each other for years, most commonly seeing each other at national industry conferences and cities across the country. I can't name them all, rather than when we're together in the greater Los Angeles area where we live and work. So that's kind of the fun thing about the both of us. Tom and I worked on different parts of one particular case many years ago, and that Association recently made the news in a bad way. To be clear, sometimes it's good for your association to make the news when you've done some great things, but we're sharing this episode today because we want to help you avoid your association making the news for all the wrong reasons. Well, last week's episode 144 was another one of our what you need to know for 2026 episodes with regular co host Kevin Davis and Julie admin, I always enjoy the richness of what they have to share with our board member audience. I got a sneak preview of that episode, and you're going to like it if you missed that episode or any other prior episode. Take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, or watch from our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms so you don't miss any future episodes. Increasing our subscriber base increases the podcast position and search results. So subscribing helps others find this free resource so they can be better equipped to lead their association. Well, those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mug that I have here. It's a favorite of mine, showing two board members talking about their deteriorated Association and what they're going to do about it. I got that from our merch store, which you can browse through from our HOA insight star org website, or the link in our show notes, and you'll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like mugs. So go to the merch store, see what we have for sale, and at least download a free zoom background. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you'd like us to address, you can contact us at 805-203-3130, or you can email us at podcast at Hoa insights.org, but this episode is on me. Here we go. So back in 2019 I was working as an expert witness on an association with a dispute about its reserve funding that had been around for a number of years. And by the time I was working on the association, it was a bit of a mess. Tom was also working on a different aspect of the case, and we commiserated about how many things had gone wrong at the association. And as I stated a few moments ago, the Association recently made the news again. So we're here today to share some lessons learned from that situation, how you can see those kinds of problems looming and avoid them at your association. So Tom Welcome to the program. Tell me some of the Ritz of this problem.

Tom Ware: 4:06

Yeah, and like I said, I don't want to get into the specifics of that that association, but I do think it's demonstrative of the fact that when associations seem to understand that their directors are, you know, going to be deemed to be there are going to be seen oftentimes to be their agents. Sometimes they're acting outside of the scope of their authority, and yet to a third party, it's going to be seen like they are acting as the agent. And sometimes that wrongful act from this rogue director can actually end up being imputed to the association, and in some cases, even the management company, which is what I think is really important to focus on here, so you could try to avoid having this type of activity happen in your association.

Robert Nordlund: 4:51

Hey, let's talk about words. You talked about agent when I think about board members, the word I think of is fiduciary. Necessary. So were you talking about something different?

Tom Ware: 5:03

The fiduciary relationship is the relationship that the director or officer owes to the corporation, and in California, at least, to the members in certain contexts. But the agency issue is that when the director acts with third parties, like a vendor or another party that's not even, you know, they're even doing business with, they can be deemed to be acting on behalf of the corporation. So even if they weren't, you know, expressly authorized to take the actions that they took, sometimes they can impute liability to the corporation. And that's why, you know, it was when we, you and I, were talking the idea of how to deal with, you know, lack of a better term, or rogue director going off and doing something that they shouldn't do, or even that the board doesn't want them to do. You know, how do you deal with that? Because, because I can have extremely negative consequences to everybody involved, okay?

Robert Nordlund: 6:01

Because when I think about a healthy Association, again, my point of view as a reserve study provider, I'd like to see the board decide, and I chose that word carefully, how the board decides. And that's not talking about how one particular individual on the board decides. A healthy situation is where the board decides, and you're talking about it, you start to get into bad territory when there's one board member that is deciding on behalf of the Association, and that's when they become an agent, and they can start to make a lot of trouble. Yeah.

Tom Ware: 6:39

I mean, basically what you're saying is true is that, technically, speaking, in a corporate setting, the corporation, and I would say that most homeowners associations are corporations. You know, there's some unincorporated associations. And I think these principles pretty much work the same for them, but in the corporation, the corporation acts by through the board of directors and the Board of Directors, you know, in order to act, needs a majority of a quorum of their directors. So, you know, unless the board has delegated that authority to one person, that director by himself, no director, no matter what title they hold, whether the president or the treasurer, they don't have authority to act on their own. They don't get to direct vendors, they don't get to basically enter contracts. They only get to do that if the rest of the majority of the board has authorized them to do so. And a lot of times people miss that. You know, there's a lot of people think I'm the president. They've elected me president, so I'm just going to go out and do whatever I need to do in between meetings, and they'll go back and report back to the board. And that happens a lot, but that's not the correct way to do it. And by when you as one of the other board members sitting in that circumstance, don't stand up and talk up to that director, you're not only exposing potentially the corporation to potential liability, but you also could be exposing yourself to theoretical liability. Okay?

Robert Nordlund: 8:00

Because so it's a good thing if you have three landscape contracts in front of you, you discuss them, you discuss the pros and cons, the costs, the services, how often they're going to come, all those kinds of things. And you together as a board, decide we're going to go with landscape company B, okay. And then you say, Okay, who's going to call landscape company B and tell a and c that they didn't make it. That's that's a good decision, a good process.

Tom Ware: 8:26

Yes, that's the way it should, should work. Okay, right? And, and also, let's face it, there's a lot of things that happen in between meetings that you know sometimes you don't have, either people aren't around or you don't really want to have to go back to the board, let's say, like in a in a stack community, if a pipe bursts and there's water leaking active water is leaking down stairs, you know, you don't have time to necessarily call a board meeting, get everybody there. So I do think there's, whether it's the management company or or, you know, particular board member, I think it's a good idea to delegate certain responsibility to a director or management to take certain action under that type of situation. But there needs to be limits on that, even if you're going to do that, not an unfettered discretion, but rather, you know, maybe $1 limit to do that. And obviously emergency, we got to stop water.

Robert Nordlund: 9:17

You know, you got me just writing a lot of notes here. I like your choices. There is delegation, an emergency situation with limits, and you had another word there. I missed it. Okay, I'll have to play the podcast back myself to catch that. But Okay, so we're talking about a healthy board is doing things together, not necessarily unanimously, but they come to consensus. They get, as you said, a majority of quorum. And they say, Okay, we are going to do this. And then you move forward, and you hire in our hypothetical landscape company B. And you know, maybe you thought landscape Company C was the better. Choice, but the board went with B, and you're a board member, so the party line is we chose B.

Tom Ware: 10:06

Yeah, I actually that brings up a good point too, because that's another thing. This is one, one of the most. In fact, it was just talking when we saw each other at the last summer. We were talking about this very topic, is that there's a directors, oh, a duty of, among other things, duty of loyalty. And among the part of that duty of loyalty is this duty to maintain the confidences of the corporation in a homeowner's association. You know, there's a lot of people that run for the board. They're not, we're not always in lockstep, right? We always have like, five board members that all agree. You know, oftentimes there is, you know, three and two. And some people get on because the, you know, the running under this idea that there's transparency, we want transparency for our community and and if they disagree with the decision of the majority, we want to basically tell the people that elected us that why We disagreed. Now that's, that's, you know, that is okay, as long as they're not disclosing confidential communications. So if you were in a executive meeting, you may be meeting with the attorneys, or maybe it's like a California week, they can meet an Executive Session for to enter a contract. So if you're an executive session, that's a confidential meeting. And so you as a director, even if you don't agree with what the majority has done, you have an obligation to maintain the confidence of the corporation, and not, you know, throw them under the bus because, because we're going to go back to what I said at the beginning, when you make statements, you know, even though you haven't been authorized by the board, but you're a director, and so when a lay person hears you say something, they there's this perception that you're speaking on behalf of the board. And so you, as a, you know, a minority director, you make a statement, and that can be imputed to the association and can create liability. And that's not that's not consistent with your fiduciary duty. The one caveat to what I'm saying is that obviously, if you know that the corporation is engaged in criminal activity or going to do something that's illegal, you have an obligation to say so. That's the that's the caveat to what I'm saying there.

Robert Nordlund: 12:18

Okay, all right, I like that if you're in a mid rise condo and there's a pipe leak, call the plumber, get something fixed. If you're in a town home Association and the splinkers are all running. They've been running for 13 hours, call the landscaper. Get it fixed in emergency situations. That's your job. If the other boards of directors are out of town, there's things you need to do. Okay, let's go back to that hypothetical. I wonder if it's going to work for everything we're going to talk about today. Landscape companies. You had a good discussion, and the board was three to two to hire company B. If you thought Company C was the right one, can you say, is it safe to say, if someone asks you, well, you know what happened last night, the board meeting. Well, we picked Company B. It was a good, interesting discussion. There's a lot of pros and cons. I was in the minority, but we went three for two for Company B, and I support that. Is that okay? Can you say even that much

Tom Ware: 13:21

you know, I think that's probably okay, but at the same time, probably shouldn't be seeing anything you know as far like, what, what is, what you know when you say, I support that, it's fine afterwards for that director to tell people I was against hiring, but then that's as far As they can really go, because they can't really disclose what was discussed at why the whys they shouldn't be necessarily disclosing. But that's where directors often get in trouble, because they'll make a, you know, they'll make some statement about the why that can create liability to the corporation. And who said what? You know? Who? Mr. Smith said, blah, blah, blah, blah. And next thing you know that that is being imputed back to the corporation. And sometimes it doesn't look, you know, it actually does not look good, especially when litigation actually ensues. That's going to be part of what all comes up,

Robert Nordlund: 14:17

yeah, or at least someone's got to call their DNO insurance provider and say, Uh oh, I think we have a problem here in a claim. All right, let's get back to the original so you've got a board, and you've got someone who maybe when they started on the board, they were doing a lot of positive things, but they just realized the other board members weren't doing much, and so they just started acting on behalf of the Association, taking more agency for the association. When does that turn into bullying, and when does that become dangerous? Well, I

Tom Ware: 14:52

think it depends on who the person is, right. I think the bullying stuff is a little bit different, is that there are people that act. Actually gain control by being bullies, and that, I think that is really dangerous. And I think there's another sometimes this happens for, you know, can be the bully, or it could be just that everybody else is busy and somebody else is willing to do it, and so they just let them. But the direct either situation that the directors have to understand that, you know they do have fiduciary duties, and you know they can't just let one person go off and and manage the the corporation on their own. You know they don't, they don't have the authority to delegate. Hey, you make all these decisions now. Now we've gone too far. It's not it opposed to making an isolated decision. We delegate you to basically supervise the landscaping. That's one thing. But, you know, just to let one person run the whole business, I think is will end up, you know, leading to liability, oftentimes, for the corporations. And like I said before, the directors too. I mean, directors have a lot more protection, but, you know, in order to the biggest defense that directors have is the business judgment rule. But the business judgment rule, it's interesting, but that's this concept that that a director should not be held liable for making honest mistakes and judgment. That's the basic gist of it, but in California and in a lot of other states, there is a condition that is imposed on the director in order to invoke it, one, they have to be exercising discretion. That means, if the ccnrs say you have to get insurance, you have to shall get insurance. That's not the decision not to get insurance is not within your discretion. So you don't get to invoke the business don't get to invoke the business judgment rule for not complying with that, because that wasn't part of your your authority. You didn't have authority to say, No, we're not going to do that. And the second thing that's important to know is that the the director has a duty to act on informed consent. That means they they have to investigate, they need to exercise reasonable diligence. Now, that doesn't mean they can't rely on other directors or experts, because sometimes certain directors, if you have a director on the board, that's an accountant, you know, maybe that's reasonable to rely on them when he's going over the financial stuff with you, but it doesn't mean you get to punt it completely. You have to still be part of the discussion and involved in this and and you can rely on their opinion. But you know, you can't just really put your head in the sand and do nothing.

Robert Nordlund: 17:32

Is our reserve balance going up or down? Is our cash balance going up or down? How are we doing? You need at least to get your fingers around those and have a grasp on it, rather than just say, oh, Joe's got that, Susie's got that, and just abdicate, oh, is that one of the key elements that you can't abdicate responsibility to the one person who's doing the hard work?

Tom Ware: 17:54

Well, I would say you shouldn't. Yeah, I think that, you know, it's one thing to rely, like I said, on the expertise, you know, if you have a lawyer that's on the board, I will tell you that, as a lawyer, your malpractice carrier probably doesn't want you giving legal advice to the Yeah, the board, but it, you know, the lawyer being on the board and you have legal issues, you know, I think it's reasonable for the other board members to rely on that person's legal expertise. But once again, you like you, like you said, you can't really abdicate your responsibilities that the corporations code. And, you know, I know in California, the Civil Code imposes duties on each director. So it's not it's, you know, you don't get to just let them. And in the case that you mentioned before, without getting details, you know, the directors were letting one person go out and take care of things and got them all into trouble.

Robert Nordlund: 18:46

Yeah, well, Tom, that was the nature of me wanting to have you on the program. We've built a real good foundation here, but we really should get back to that topic. But I think right now it's a good time to take a break and hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we've act with more common sense for common areas and here specifically, or as much as we can say about this one particular case,

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Robert Nordlund: 19:42

and we're back. Well, during the break, Tom and I were continuing to talk about this, and what we want to do is we built a foundation. And Tom, can you talk now about how that the Board of Directors, how you can have one board member that. Starts engaging in conduct that exposes the board and the association to liability. Tell me about that process. Yeah, this is

Tom Ware: 20:10

what saying about the fact is, you have to understand that as directors, that when you deal with third parties, they're going to deem you to be the agent of the corporation oftentimes. And there's certain defenses to then, and I don't want to get too in the weeds, but for purposes of teaching standpoint that I think it's really important that the minority directors, you know, understand that the actions taken by you know, other directors, when they're dealing with third parties, get, you know, can create not only liability for the corporation, but liability for them as directors. And even if there's not liability, nobody wants to be sued. You're, you know, you're, you're placing yourself in harm's way. And you know, there's, there's this big legal process and and what I mentioned to you about the business judgment, or what's interesting about the business judgment rule is another case that I did handle, the Parth case, which actually went up on appeal. I think is a good example for this too, because it works both ways. Because in part Miss Parth was a director of a volunteer homeowners or she's volunteer director of a homeowner association. She was the president, and she did sign springs. She in Palm Springs, right? Okay, I remember that. So what happened was she the allegation list. Allegations. Allegations were that she signed a contract without Board approval. The allegations was that she hired a roofing contractor that was not licensed and resulted in defective conditions to the property. Also, they argued that she obtained a loan without the loans under the governing documents required membership approval, but she obtained the loan without that, and that was the allegation, and we we were retained through the DNO carrier to defend her. And so she was being sued by her homeowners association for these damages. Initially, we got her out on a business judgment rule saying that she should not be liable because she act in good faith. You know, yes, she made a mistake, but they were like honest mistakes in judgment. Okay? And so the trial court agreed, but the Court of Appeal reversed it, and the Court of Appeal held that, no, this is what I was saying before. No, she, you know, she had to. There was like testimony in her deposition that she hadn't read the governing documents, ouch, and yeah. So there was this idea that she hadn't used exercise her reasonable diligence. And so what that means? It didn't mean she was liable. What it meant was we had to go back down to the trial court and try the case. And what's significant that as a director is, you don't, you know that's this case took five years. So five years Miss Parth was, like, involved in litigation and this allegation, and you know, she was being defended, she do was, the allegation was that she had, you know, more than us. It was a seven figure liability claim against her, okay, and there was insurance reservation of rights, which meant that, if she got, was held liable, or she could be personally liable for that amount,

Robert Nordlund: 23:21

she was trying to help and trying to make it easier on the

Tom Ware: 23:25

but again, the allegation was that she was acting unilaterally. Now I will tell you that we tried the case. It was 26 day trial, and the facts, I think we proved, were not what was alleged. We actually did prove that her well, she didn't like follow all the necessary procedures to a T you know, the board, she was acting with consent to the majority of the board, even if they hadn't gone and formally proved it in a meeting for each act that she did according to finding she acted in good faith in the business judgment rule applied, and then also that they didn't establish damage claims too. So we completely defended it, but we had to be in trial for 26 days. And this directors was exposed to a, you know, seven figure judgment, and, you know, with potentially the no insurance involved on, you know, coverage on that. And so that's the thing that I think is really important to know, is that, is that, if you're a director out there, you know, you personally and you're actually acting, you know, ostensibly, without not following the precise, like, rules and procedures of your what they call in law school, following the corporate formalities. I mean, making decisions in board meetings, making sure the minutes reflect that those decisions were made, making sure that everybody is consenting with it, as opposed to, like, I think, in Miss Park's situation, she was acting in the best intent of the board, and yet, you know, because she was kind of just going off and doing things, you know, what she thought was right, she exposed herself to liability, which you don't want to do. And then the flip. Side I would say is that, you know, in other cases that I've seen, you know, there is what I would call a rogue director that has goes out without, you know, in some situations where the board just kind of says, you take care of it, Bob, you know, you take care of this thing and and Bob just goes off, and nobody is paying any attention to what Bob was doing, and now, all of a sudden, the association is being sued for a litany of actions that this director did in that situation. Those other directors have potential exposure because they didn't really exercise judgment. They did. They just, they just ignored it and let him do it and and so not only is the corporation exposed to liability, but the directors themselves don't have a lot of the defenses that they should have. Finally on that is that if the if the director, and this where we get your bully. Question here is that I have seen situations where the person gains control because they are a bully. Everybody's afraid to talk to them, okay, and everything like that. Well, the problem with with that is that if the bully is going to do something that's going to expose the association to liability, the minority director really do have an fiduciary duty to stand up to them, to to actually do something, because otherwise, failure to do so is going to result, potentially result in liability to the corporation. Of course, how you stand up to the bullies is a more difficult situation.

Robert Nordlund: 26:35

Yeah, let's see. When we wrap this up, being on the board at an association is hard. Takes a lot of time. It takes your care. Well, we talk about the four C's, you need to care. You need to be curious. You need to be oh, gee, I'm going to miss them now. Care curious. You need to have, I hope our audience is checking me on this, and you need to communicate. I got three of them, but you need to exhibit those behaviors and sitting on the side and letting someone else run with the ball. That's not how a healthy association is supposed to run. So you need to serve your role and help balance each other out and be politely disagreeing on things. I think this is better. I think this is worse, and continue to come together as a group, is that where we're going on this?

Tom Ware: 27:30

I think the first step of the director would be to confront the director, and should be an executive session, especially if there's a potential liability for what the director is doing because you don't want to air that in open session, because now we're again making admissions that's going to get imputed to the corporation. If that does not help, I always recommend the board members to ask the legal counsel for an illegal opinion on the validity of whatever action you know that the directors are taking, bringing in the bringing in the big stick, bringing in the expert to say, yeah, you can do that. You can't do that. Okay, some associations like they have to like civility pledges, or anything that the problem with the bully is the bully just ignores that. That's a good idea to like, remind people of what their responsibilities are and how they're supposed to treat people. Unfortunately, with the bully, you know, I did, I think you need to talk to the attorney and try to bring the attorney in and help you in that situation.

Robert Nordlund: 28:28

Yeah, well, we want our our audience here, to have success at their association. What I'm hearing is you need to be balanced, and everyone needs to look after each other, look after the association. The board needs to discuss things. At least everyone be aware, even if you do delegate a decision to someone, the other people need to be aware and make sure it's a democratic process. It's the board running the association, not Old Joe, someone who's been doing it for the longest time. Oh, I just got it. Care. Curious, courageous, and communicate effectively. So be those things Google, business judgment rule and Tom, is that safe? They'll learn more. Start.

Tom Ware: 29:14

That's a start. I mean, it's not the answer, like I said, there's always a potential dealing with rogue directors or bullies, I would say is probably the most difficult issue dealing with Hoa is because it's hard to teach a unreasonable person to be reasonable. So I do think it requires a lot of diligence and patience, and sometimes people just say, I don't want to deal with it. I'm just gonna leave the board. But I do think it's incumbent, you know, it's like eight HOA are the like, the true little microcosm of democracy, you know. And you know, you kind of get what you deserve if you are going to, you know, stick. Your head in the sand and ignore that the bully has taken over your association, then you're going to basically potentially pay for that. And so I think it's incumbent, not just on the board member, but on the members, the members themselves, usually the situations where there is a bully, the members know there's a bully too, and yet the members take no action. And you know, at least in one of the situations, actually, the one we talked about, the members eventually recalled this person from the board. So I think that is what has to happen. I mean, members themselves have to kind of step up and and try to address the bully on the board.

Robert Nordlund: 30:39

Yeah, well, that is the democratic process, you can either vote them out or vote someone else new in the next year and look after your association. Do what's best for your association.

Tom Ware: 30:49

Yeah, and if you don't, unfortunately, you're going to bear the risk of that.

Robert Nordlund: 30:53

Yeah, you as a board member, you as the association in that case that you talked about, multi year case, I'm presuming insurance paid a lot of the bill, but still, to get your association mired in bad news, it's got to be a bad time. Well, the

Tom Ware: 31:09

other thing about insurance is, is interesting because, you know, yeah, there should be insurance Gao there, but always there's issues with potential coverage. Issues the mere fact that you have DNO insurance, or, you know, general liability insurance doesn't mean that the association has no exposure or it, you know, it's becomes a case by case basis, depending on what the plaintiff has alleged. Like, for example, if there's a contract dispute, there's typically not going to be any coverage for that, because there's no coverage that type of thing there. If they if, you know, sometimes associations make mistakes, this is this comes up a lot, actually, if the they get a complaint, somebody makes a claim against them, and yet they don't really think they don't want to report to the insurance carrier, because they're afraid it's going to impact their insurance, so they don't, and they wait, and eventually the claim comes, like six months later, but in that six month interim, the associations change policies, and so they didn't report under the original policy, and so now there's maybe not coverage. And then even when you have coverage in place, and everything you've done everything right? You know, there's, there's all sorts of exclusions and policies, you know, I'll tell you. We have mold exclusions. We have other types of exclusions that say, Yeah, you know, we're not going to pay for that or and when we're talking about the rogue director doing something kind of that could be qualified as intentional misconduct. There's typically not insurance coverage for intentional misconduct. There's actually a really good case. Well, it's instructive. It's not a good case for HOA. It just recently happened up up north, and in that case they they actually found the association. The association failed to repair it. In a nutshell, they failed to repair a under our cap and underground Well, that was leading into into somebody's upstairs unit. Could spend an hour talking about this case on its own, but they had knowledge of it, allegedly, and they didn't disclose everything to the homeowner. And so in the end, there ends up being a judgment, you know, a seven figure judgment against the association, and they impose punitive damages, you know, to punish them, and not just against them, but against the President as well. The President ends up getting held and personally liable because they said that the business judgment rule did not apply, because the conduct here was, you know, between not good faith, but rather gross, negligent. Or there was allegations that it could, you know, the suggested it might even be fraud. So that conduct, you know, when you act that way, you're not going to end up with coverage under your policies. Either you know or you potentially don't. That's like another thing that ends up excluding it.

Robert Nordlund: 34:04

Okay. Well, I'm gonna finish with two questions. Name of that case. For anyone who's curious, do you remember?

Unknown: 34:10

I do. Tell me after the show, and we'll get in the show. Tell you the show Yes, I get the show notes. Begins with R, but I don't remember.

Robert Nordlund: 34:17

The other one is just boy, yeah, be, be the good little democracy. At your association and work together. And the other point was, yeah, maybe insurance covers it. Maybe it doesn't. But what's that going to do to the real estate values? Because all the real estate agents know that you're embroiled in some kind of trouble, and that's got to hurt everyone.

Tom Ware: 34:39

No, I Yes, you're right. The key is to try to avoid that. And one of the ways to avoid, man, I would say, for everybody you know, take ownership of your homeowners association. Don't just punt and let somebody else. Obviously, things are going well, great, but don't let, don't let a bully or somebody just simply because you. Don't want to, you don't want to deal with them, you'll end up being in, you know, exposed to liability, and it'll, let's face it, if there's liability to the association, every all the members pay that, you know, they'll be assessed, and they'll pay, they'll pay a portion of it.

Robert Nordlund: 35:14

Yeah, so we get back to trust but verify if you're a board member on that. Okay. Well, thank you. Tom It's great talking with you. I find myself taking a lot of notes here. It's going to be hard for me to digest this and get it down to just some short show notes. Thank you so much for taking time to be with us on the program. Any closing thoughts to add at this time?

Tom Ware: 35:33

No, that's That's it. Like I said, pay pay attention, both as a director and as a homeowner. And you know, I mean, I do also would issue the caveat. My experience is that most people who serve on their directors do so with the best intentions of the corporation. So most the time, we're okay. But you know, you need to basically in those rare situations where you do have a somebody that is arguably not acting in the good faith, or arguably not acting for the benefit of the corporation? I do think it's incumbent of everybody to kind of stand up to the bully.

Robert Nordlund: 36:11

I like that. Well, if you'd like to get in touch with Tom or learn more about the work his law firm does in California, you can go to their website at k, g, s, w, law.com We hope you learned some great HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 36:36

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