Hill Wallack LLP‘s Community Association Practice Group will be exhibiting at the 2015 New Jersey Cooperator’s Condo, HOA and Co-op Expo on Saturday, May 9, 2015, 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Join board members, property managers, building owners and real estate professionals and meet building service companies, attend educational seminars and get your questions answered by a member of our team at Booth 600.

For more information or to register to attend, click here!

Hill Wallack LLP‘s Community Association Practice Group will be exhibiting at the 2014 New Jersey Cooperator’s Condo, HOA and Co-op Expo on Wednesday, May 7, 2013, 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey. Join board members, property managers, building owners and real estate professionals and meet building service companies, attend educational seminars and get your questions answered by a member of our team.

Hill Wallack LLP Partner Caroline Record, Esq. is among the featured panelists of experts at the Educational Seminar titled “Breaking Bad – The Insiders Guide to By-Laws & Rules.” This seminar will discuss how by-laws and rules are the keys to maintaining a harmonious community, provided that they are reasonable and properly enforced. The panel will discuss the keys to drafting, enacting and enforcing by-laws and house rules. Topics to be explored include when to change by-laws/rules; the proper and legal method of changing them; the role of your association’s attorney; how your governing documents affect by-laws/rules, and much more.

For more information or to register to attend, click here!

By Ronald L. Perl, Esq.

In an unpublished opinion decided February 7, 2014, New Jersey’s intermediate appellate court has held that an association’s duty to maintain common areas of a common interest community, created by statute and by its governing documents, does not “equate to a civil tort duty and liability to an injured party.” The case, Qian v. Toll Brothers Inc., et al., involved a slip and fall injury to a resident in an adult residential community, who fell on ice following a winter storm. The resident sued the association, its developer (who controlled the board), its managing agent and the contractor responsible for snow and ice removal. The trial court dismissed the claims against the association, developer and managing agent (“the Association defendants”) based on a long line of New Jersey cases holding that private residential property owners are immune from liability for injuries to a pedestrian resulting from a failure to maintain adjacent public sidewalks. In 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that such immunity was applicable to a residential condominium association with respect to an adjacent public sidewalk in the City of Hoboken. In that case, Luchejko v. The City of Hoboken, the Supreme Court found that an association of homeowners was residential in nature and therefore would not apply the same tort duty or liability as a commercial owner owes to the general public.

In the Qian case, however, the fall occurred on an interior sidewalk within the community rather than on an adjacent public sidewalk. The resident argued that this distinction, plus the specific maintenance responsibilities spelled out by statute and governing documents, required the imposition of tort liability. The Appellate Division rejected this reasoning, pointing out the difference between a legal responsibility to act and the imposition of tort liability: “The common law, however, does not impose a duty that makes the association answerable in tort for negligent performance of its statutory and contractual duty.”

You can read the Court’s decision in Qian v.Toll Brothers Inc., et al. here:

For more information on this case or any other issue concerning your community association, please contact one of our Community Associations attorneys. For breaking news or updates on new blog posts, follow us on Twitter at: @njcondolaw.

Hill Wallack LLP’s Community Association Practice Group will be exhibiting at the 2013 New Jersey Cooperator’s Condo, HOA and Co-op Expo on Wednesday, May 1, 2013, 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey. Come say hello at Booth 435 and drop your business card for a chance to win a great prize!

Join board members, property managers, building owners and real estate professionals and meet building service companies, attend educational seminars and get your questions answered by a member of our team.

If you are involved in an insurance dispute relating to Super Storm Sandy, please ask us about reviewing your case free of charge. Contingent fees are available for Sandy representation.

For more information or to register to attend, click here!

By Jonathan H. Katz, Esq.

Hill Wallack LLP’s Condo FAQs is a continuing series in which we answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) pertaining to condominiums, cooperatives and homeowners’ associations. These FAQs relate to various issues that include interpretation of governing documents, board meetings, suspension of privileges, collections, or bankruptcy and foreclosure.

Question:  How do we know if the township is correctly reimbursing our condominium association for street lighting, and garbage and snow removal?

Answer: In Part I, we discussed New Jersey’s Municipal Services Act, N.J.S.A. 40:67-23.2 to -23.8, and its requirement that every municipality in the State must either provide certain services to qualified private communities or reimburse these communities for such services.

The question now focuses on how the municipality must calculate the reimbursement owed to an association if the municipality determines not to provide the services.

Generally, community associations are only entitled to reimbursement in the amount it would cost the municipality if it were to provide that service itself. Associations are generally not entitled to reimbursement for services above and beyond what the municipality normally provides to other residents. For example, while it may cost an association significantly more to hire a private contractor to plow its roadways, the reimbursement required by law is only the cost to the municipality were it to provide such service, which in most cases is significantly less than the cost to the association. Moreover, while an association would be entitled to reimbursement for snow removal on its roadways, an association cannot seek reimbursement for those same services on sidewalks, driveways or parking areas.

However, this general rule regarding reimbursement does contain a caveat. If, for example, the nature of an association’s roadways make them more difficult to plow than normal public roads and streets, the association may be entitled to a greater reimbursement than the township’s normal cost per mile. This was the result in Stonehill Prop. Owners Ass’n v. Township of Vernon, 312 N.J. Super. 68 (App. Div. 1998), where the Court recognized that because the municipal roads could be plowed more efficiently than the association’s roads, which were curvy, winding and steep, the township was required to pay additional amounts by way of reimbursement for what the Court considered a “difficulty factor” over and above what the actual cost to the Township would be for providing these services.

If you have a question about municipal services or another community association issue that you would like us to address, please e-mail it to us, along with your name and your association, to jkatz@hillwallack.com.

By Jonathan H. Katz, Esq.

Hill Wallack LLP’s Condo FAQs is a continuing series in which we answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) pertaining to condominiums, cooperatives and homeowners’ associations. These FAQs relate to various issues that include interpretation of governing documents, board meetings, suspension of privileges, collections, or bankruptcy and foreclosure.

Question:  Is my association entitled to reimbursements from our township for certain municipal services such as street lighting, garbage removal and snow removal?

Answer:  Put simply, YES!  New Jersey’s Municipal Services Act – which was enacted in 1989 and went into effect in 1993 – is the first (and still only) legislation in the country that requires cities and towns to provide certain municipal services to community associations within their borders. In short, the Act requires that every municipality in New Jersey must either provide certain services – including the removal of snow and ice, collection of leaves, trash and recyclables, and lighting of roads and streets – to qualified private communities “in the same fashion” as the municipality provides such services along public streets or the municipality may opt to reimburse these communities for such services.

The purpose of the Act is simple – to eliminate the double payment for some services residents of these associations now pay through both property taxes and association fees.  Although the Act went into effect almost twenty years ago, many qualified community associations still fail to take advantage of having their township provide these services (or reimbursements) simply because they are unaware of the entitlement to them.

If your association is not receiving the benefits of the Municipal Services Act, please contact one of our community association attorneys to discuss how your association may be entitled to significant reimbursements that could be used to free up other funds for capital reserves, necessary repairs, or long-overdue improvements to your community.

If you have a question about municipal services or another community association issue that you would like us to address, please e-mail it to us, along with your name and your association, to jkatz@hillwallack.com.