Larry E. Schner, chair of the firm's Litigation Practice Group, wrote a guest column in The Palm Beach Post on August 5, 2026.
Florida boards are working under real pressure. Buildings are aging, insurance premiums have surged, and state law now requires many associations to fully fund reserves that earlier boards were allowed to waive. None of that can be wished away. What a board can control is how it explains the decision.
After decades of representing associations in litigation, his read is that most lawsuits do not begin because an assessment is unpopular. They begin because owners believe they were not informed, not heard, or not treated fairly. Transparency, in that light, is a form of risk management.