Quorum Case Files

Season finale. Aina Nalu is a 189-unit, hotel-zoned condominium in Lahaina where tourists sheltered in the pool on August 8, 2023 while both buildings burned. The association's master policy, as reported, is built around partial damage and carries about twenty percent of a rebuild estimated above two hundred million dollars. Three years on, the pool is empty, owners face fee demands on units that no longer exist, and the Hawaii Supreme Court has decided who gets paid first from the four billion dollar settlement. Then Honolulu, where a hurricane that has not happened is already costing condo owners their mortgages: 375 to 390 buildings renew under 100 percent hurricane coverage, Fannie Mae's 100 percent rule kicks in, banks keep a blacklist, and Waikiki sales fall 48 percent. Then the turn: Act 296 and the state's hurricane relief fund writing condo policies, rates reported down 40 to 50 percent. Ian and Chris close the season with the verdict on all eight counts for HOA and community association board members, community managers and anyone who signs an insurance renewal.

Two twin townhouse complexes on Palisades Drive burn on the same night in January 2025. Upper Woodies, forty-six units, carries a private master policy reported at up to thirty-six million dollars. Lower Woodies, thirty-six units, has been dropped by its carrier and sits on the California FAIR Plan at the twenty-million-dollar cap. One year later, one HOA is rebuilding and the other has voted, eighty-nine percent, to sell the land for about a third of what the homes were worth, and then learns the sale trips the city's mansion tax. Ian and Chris read the declarations page: what each board thought it had bought, what a cap is, what a private carrier's non-renewal takes away from a condo board's options, and how a one-billion-dollar FAIR Plan assessment travels around the state. No blame on either board. Both did what the market allowed. For HOA and condo board members, community managers and community association insurance professionals: the renewal vote is the only board decision that survives the fire. Next: Lahaina, Honolulu, and when the market leaves, who insures.

After Hurricane Irma, a Naples condominium association files a roof claim and its carrier sends a check for thirty-two thousand five hundred sixty-eight dollars and twenty-three cents. The board reads the back of the policy, demands appraisal, and the carrier refuses. Seven years later the Eleventh Circuit affirms a judgment of more than six million dollars plus a million in interest and tells the insurer the result came from its own policy language and its own handling of the claim. Then Ian and Chris cross the country to Colorado, where a townhome association's hail award of more than ten million dollars is vacated because the appraiser the board picked was not impartial and an earlier fee contract was concealed. Same clause, both ways. In between, a ninety-second stop in Orlando, where owners at Dockside at Ventura are paying a twelve-year special assessment while the insurance fight runs. For HOA and condo board members, community managers and anyone on a community association insurance committee. Not legal advice.

Hurricane Ida breaks a rooftop water pipe at Metairie Towers, a two-hundred-eleven-unit condo tower in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. One hundred eighty-one units are damaged and every resident is ordered out. Then the strange part: the insurance pays. The community association collects roughly forty-three million dollars from a stack of insurers. Yet in April 2023 the owners get a notice saying the thirteen million left will not restore their units. Ian and Chris read the only record there is, a Louisiana appeals court ruling that lets the owners sue their board members, their community manager, their public adjuster and ten insurers as a class, and follow the money from a fifty-three million dollar estimate to a reported twenty-four million dollar sale. Along the way: four hundred thousand dollars allegedly wired to a "cyber pirate," a sell-or-assess vote, and a sixty-second detour on why Louisiana's guaranty fund treats a condo very differently from Florida's. For HOA and condo board members and community managers who will one day hold the insurance check. Not legal advice.

September 2004. Two hurricanes, Frances and Jeanne, hit a forty-three story oceanfront condo tower on Singer Island, Florida, weeks apart. The community association's windstorm policy carries a limit of about fifty million dollars, and the board members ask the one question that matters: is that per storm, or total? Their broker says per storm. The board spends more than one hundred million dollars on remediation. Then the insurer says the limit was fifty million, once. Ian and Chris read the two court opinions that follow: the Florida Supreme Court decision that lets a condo association sue its insurance broker for negligence by limiting the state's economic loss rule to products cases, and the federal ruling that recognizes an enhanced duty of care when a broker has a special relationship with its client. The Declarations Page segment is literally about a declarations page this time: what per occurrence and aggregate mean for the ear, and why asking the broker is not the same as reading the policy. For HOA and condo board members and community managers who sign off on an insurance renewal every year. Not legal advice.