Condo Media - October 2016 - 30

Legislative Update
LAC has no concerns: It requires association boards to give owners a copy
of the insurance appraisal if the association's master policy is covering damage
to the owner's unit. Statutory protections
ensuring owners' access to association
records probably make this measure "unnecessary," Frank Lombardi, a partner in
Goodman, Shapiro, Lombardi, LLC and
co-chair of the LAC says. But making this
a requirement "won't do any harm," in
his view. Even without this law in place,
he says, "If owners requested a copy of
the insurance appraisal, I'd advise the
board to give it to them."
He is much less sanguine about
another measure lawmakers considered
but did not approve, requiring arbitration of virtually all association disputes,
and giving parties on both sides the
right to demand a jury trial in Superior
Court if they don't like the arbitrator's
decision. The LAC identified two major
problems with this legislation:

■ The legislation gives parties the right

rule or to cease an action that violates
one. There are some exceptions to the
arbitration requirement, he notes, "but
not nearly enough of them."
The House approved the measure
this year but the Senate sent it to a
study committee, where it died. "It's a
bad bill," Lombardi says, "but hopefully
we'll be able to modify it before it comes
up again."

The breadth of the law is also problematic, he believes. It would require
arbitration of association disputes
involving board actions ordering owners to take an action to comply with a

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
On the national level, the Community
Associations Institute (CAI) scored two
major legislative successes this year:
Passage of the Housing Opportunity
Through Modernization Act (mandating changes in the Federal Housing
Administration's (FHA) requirements
for condominium loans), and approval
at the committee level of the Amateur
Radio Parity Act, dealing with the
installation of HAM radio antennas in
condominium communities.

■ It makes arbitration (currently an

option but not a requirement for
condominium owners and boards)
mandatory. Requiring associations
and owners to take that step before
going to court will increase the cost
and time required to resolve conflicts,
Lombardi says.
to demand a jury trial. But this conflicts with Rhode Island's rules of civil
procedure, which, Lombardi notes,
specifically prohibit jury trials for
some claims, including the declaratory
judgments that parties in an association dispute would seek. "This makes
no sense," Lombardi says.

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Condo Media - October 2016

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