On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:05:59 -0400, "Brian V"
wrote:


I would be VERY cautious doing this. Here is MA it is illeagal for water
or electricity to be shut off if there are children, elderly, terminal or
special needs people in the homes or properties. If any of these apply to

I should have asked about this last night. Certainly no assurances
were made that no one was in this situation. Kurt, they are sending
one more letter, certified and regular, to the 7 and maybe even to
people who only owe as little 115 or 230 for more than 3 months. (and
they must be still applying the liens or you're right, people who
stand to get away without paying a thousand dollars or two would just
do without water for a couple weeks until they can sell the house and
skip.)

(They don't want to be a paper tiger anymore, so I said they should
send different letters to people who owe a lot and those who owe a
little, because surely they won't disconnect people who only owe 115
dollars, but maybe that's what they plan to do.)

Even when it's not explicitly illegal, I think people and an HOA can
be liable. One of the things I've found surprising about tort law is
that it's not quite covered by the Constitution's exclusion of ex post
facto laws (which is [mostly or entrirely] about criminal law anyhow).
That is, there is a law that people, are responsible for their
negligence, but courts decide after the fact what is negligence and
what isn't. Because there is an endless number of ways to be
negligent and no one could list them all in advance. Even though
normal people can disagree about what is negligence and what isn't, a
respondent is stuck with what the jury or judge decides.

any of the tennants the HOA could be in for a whole world of hurt.
Was it a written vote? If not, I would demand a written vote just to
simply cover your own bacon.

That's a good idea. It wasn't a hand vote, but the secretary is very
diligent about writing down who voted nay. She won't even eat during
the meetings because she'll miss something. I'm positive she has the
count, and pretty positive she has my name, but I will call her and
make sure my no vote, and the other guy's are specified.

I highly doubt that the HOA would have the authority to turn off a
tennants service regardless what the lawyer says. Their purpose is to "make
the community a better place" not act as a jail keeper. Why not contact the
local water company, building department etc and ask them? Once they flip

I think that's a good idea in that it would be a lot easier to get an
answer than from the water company than a judge. Because, they'd
probably disagree with me but i think the water company must have
fewer issues and fewer legal issues.

Well, I called the water company, and even though I started with the
Baltimore County number, I got referred to another number and midway
in the conversation I found out she was giving me Baltimore City rules
and didn't know about Baltimore County (which doesn't overlap the city
at all.) so she gave me to her supervisor, who said they could not
disconnect an individual house. They only disconnect where there is a
meter, and we all share one meter. Even though there are individual
valves. So she didn't know anything really about this. She did say
that multiple homes sharing one meter is not unusual at all, and
sometimes they arrange to bill based on the number of people living in
each house. I would save a little if they did that, but then we
would have to have a PPHMC, a Person Per House Monitoring Commission,
and that would be bad.

the valve without the proper due-dilagance ramifications could be huge.

The board has XX and YY insurance (Negligence and Malfeasance? No,
something that sounds nicer than that), which they called upon 20
years ago when I sued the HOA. I was pro se against a real lawyer but
did pretty well anyhow.

But in an extreme situation, the damages might exceed their insurance.