LITIGATION AND INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE
Dear Fellow Unit Owners,
At a recent Board meeting the Board was asked how many ongoing lawsuits the Association involved with. Treasurer John Labriola immediately responded, refusing to answer the question citing confidentiality. While it’s true that the details of ongoing litigation are, and should be protected from disclosure, the existence of the matters and the cost to the unit owners are, and should be public knowledge. Mr. Labriola immediately changed his mind and went on another verbal rampage blaming unit owner Ilan Weiss for the Association’s legal costs. But he still refused to provide the information we unit owners are entitled to.
For at least the ten plus years I’ve been a unit owner Ilan Weiss, who lives in New York and owns four units in the Village, has been a thorn in the side of the Association. He has called to task just about every Board and every Board president when he believed they had breached their fiduciary duty to the unit owners. I should know. I was criticized by Mr. Weiss during my time on the Board back in 2006 and 2007, as well as 2012 and 2013.
Mr. Labriola has often used a 2011 case involving Mr. Weiss and the Association as a target to denounce Mr. Weiss, the previous Board and myself. I think an explanation is in order.
Since International Village ‘went condo’ back in 1979 unit owner Doug Meyers has built a real-estate business anchored in buying, selling and renting units here in the Village. At various times he has owned and/or controlled more than 20 units. And for most of that time he bought and rented units without going through the Association’s Sales and Leases review process. Obviously this practice ran counter to our Governing Documents. But he was allowed to do this over the decades by every Board of Directors. That changed in 2010.
In 2010 Mr. Meyers got himself appointed to the Board. In May of that year Doug participated in a vote that Mr. Weiss believed benefitted Doug and another Board member in violation of our Docs and to the detriment of the Membership. After Mr. Meyers refused Mr. Weiss’ demand to ‘make the Association whole’ Mr. Weiss sued the Association in 2011.
The lawsuit sought the payment of $4,100 from Mr. Meyers and unit owner Edwin Kaufman to the Association and further demanded that the Association enforce it’s Docs uniformly to all unit owners. In this particular case it meant that the Association should require that Mr. Meyers play by the same rules as the rest of us. As expected Doug resisted those demands and since he was a director he was able to have the Association’s insurance company take the case.
As far as I am concerned the most important aspect of the case was the demand that the Association enforce it’s Docs uniformly to all unit owners. When the 2012 Board took control we sought to settle the case. It then became a three-party suit: Ilan Weiss, the Association, and Doug Meyers/Edwin Kaufman. The litigation eventually settled with the insurance company paying Mr. Weiss about $54,000, a certain amount to Meyers/Kaufman, and the Association agreeing to uniformly enforce the Docs.
What I find most intriguing about this case is that Mr. Weiss did not ask for personal damages. [For those of us not quite up to date on civil law procedure: In civil cases the plaintiff always asks for money for him/herself (damages) and often asks the defendant to do something different (injunctive relief).] In this case the plaintiff (Weiss) asked defendant Meyers/Kaufman to pay $4,100 (damages) not to himself but to the Association, and asked defendant Association to enforce the Docs uniformly (injunctive relief). Mr. Weiss has repeatedly stated that he spent about $79,000 on the case. Which means that he had a net loss of about $25,000.
When the 2014 Board took control they voted to cease all enforcement actions with Mr. Meyers, so the ultimate winners in the case were the lawyers and Mr. Meyers. The lawyers got paid, and Mr. Meyers can now go back to operating his business as he sees fit.
One other item regarding litigation and Mr. Weiss. Mr. Labriola has often associated me with the “evil” Mr. Ilan Weiss, specifically accusing me of supporting Mr. Weiss in his actions against the Association. Here are the simple facts. In 2012 Mr. Weiss was involved in a lawsuit with another unit owner. The litigants resided in different states so the case was tried in a federal court in New York. (Note: The Association was not a litigant.) I was asked to testify. As it turned out the case settled before I was called to the stand. I paid my way to New York and took advantage of my time there to visit with friends and family.
Now back to the present. According to various sources the Association is currently a litigant in multiple lawsuits, most of which involve Mr. Labriola’s personal matters. We, the unit owners, are now paying for his personal legal bills. As if all this isn’t crazy enough, he is even trying to get our attorney to bring an action against a fellow Board member.
We are not only paying his personal legal bills but because of the number of open cases it is almost certain that our Directors & Officers as well as our General Liability insurance premiums will go up dramatically. So will the deductible the Association must pay in all future legal cases. This means that the cost to defend all future legitimate cases (slip and fall, for example) will be much higher. Insurance experts I’ve spoken with mentioned that carriers would also be very cautious about accepting new cases. While the budget items for both the legal bills and insurance premiums have been increased slightly for 2015, I fear that Mr. Labriola’s reckless words and behavior will cost us a lot more than that.
If fact, if it weren’t for the Board’s willingness to blindly follow John, like lemmings over a cliff, the Association’s legal bills would be much, much less. And we would not be faced with even greater legal expenses in the coming years.
Our Board of Directors’ first and only loyalty is to the unit owners, not just one of their own. The Board has the responsibility and the authority to stop using our money to pay for Mr. Labriola’s personal legal expenses. The simple truth is that the Membership, ALL OF US, have no duty to pay the current nor future legal expenses for John Labriola who, when you get down to it, is just another unit owner.
I ask that you keep this in mind when you cast your vote in the upcoming Village election.
Respectfully,
Marvin Tow
Zurich building
