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Board Member Removal Update by Kevin Wine, May 15, 2026, 5:14 PM, reply, branch, edit

The final hearing on the board member removal lawsuit took place this last Tuesday, May 12th. It was originally scheduled for April 23rd, but the court adjourned it due to internal scheduling issues. Coincidentally, May 12th was also the day the election mailing was sent out, marking the actual start of the redone 2025, combined 2026 election.

Just like after the election lawsuit concluded, the board could not resist drafting and sending another one of its litigation summaries, this time about the removal lawsuit. At the moment it was just emailed, presumably only to owners consenting to receive electronic notices. If you haven't already guessed, I have several issues with their update. First, and most importantly, the prior election lawsuit concluded with a consent order, which was an agreement between me and the board on how the election was going to be run this year, and paragraph 4 of that order prohibited use of association resources for campaign purposes. One of the candidates is a board member and he voted to approve the distribution of their message, by management, which is using association resources. While I'm sure the board will argue with me, the content of the message is clearly campaign oriented, as it mentions both me and Mr. Marchitto directly and in a negative light. In my opinion the message should not have been sent by the board in the middle of an election. The candidates are of course free to talk and write about it, but not using association resources. I will be formally complaining about this.

Stepping back from the details for a moment, the overarching concern is again the board's disregard for the rules and their intentional manipulation of the elections. It is possible they will get in trouble for what they did, after another ADR hearing and more legal expenses, but now the damage is already done. The election is "tainted", exposing the association again to the possibility of more litigation in the very near future. This is their standard playbook, a three-way conspiracy between the board majority, the association's attorneys, and management, to damage the credibility of anyone that complains too much or in a manner they deem offensive. The only winner in the whole mess is the attorneys, who have already racked up $85k of general legal fees in just the first 3 months of their tenure.

In case you missed it, here is the removal litigation update:

https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/RemovalLitigationUpdate.pdf

While this update was a little less twisted than the election litigation update, it is still not entirely accurate and leaves out some obvious counter points.

1-I will admit that I did not fully appreciate the level of reluctance by the trial courts to overturn an ADR ruling. That was the main reason the judge left the arbitrator's decision in tact, even in spite of multiple defects in that decision. The main reason was not "health and safety", as represented by the board.

2-There was a very similar case and lawsuit in NJ in 2020, at a condominium in Atlantic City. The fact pattern is essentially identical - a trustee got crosswise with the rest of the board, and heated dispute (much more than here) ensued, police were called multiple times and complaints filed. Eventually the board, at an improperly noticed board meeting, removed the offending trustee, in violation of the rules. The removed trustee sued. The trial court judge re-instated the trustee. Same facts, totally different result. The case was ATL-C-49-20, Boyle v. Huff, if anyone wants all the details - it was a complicated case and ended up being appealed all the way to the NJ Supreme Court, but not on the original issues of the removal.

3-The board could have filed a claim against the association's Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance policy, and the insurance company would have defended the board "for free", minus the $5k deductible. This was how they handled the election lawsuit. But for some reason this time, board's counsel ended up with the case, apparently at a final cost of $40k. They forget to mention this in their update. I was excluded from any of the legal strategy discussion, so I can only guess what was behind that decision. For whatever reason, the board thought it was better to waste $35k, than to use the insurance company.

If there is another situation involving ADR in the future, we are now much more aware of the tricks. As it turns out, our fate was sealed at the April 20th ADR hearing in front of a retired judge. That is why the board's attorney was so adamant about forcing Mr. Marchitto into ADR, with an arbitrator of the board's choosing, to the point of threatening to conduct the ADR without Mr. Marchitto if necessary. The ADR rules are much more relaxed, and the relationships much more casual than with the real courts. While this is good in once sense, and more affordable, the ADR process lacks the same level of oversight and institutional integrity as the judiciary. I'm not saying it happened here, but I can easily see how the process could be manipulated to achieve a particular outcome.

Kevin