
Occasionally, a self-managed HOA's Board of Directors forgets that it has a responsibility to engage only in activities that benefit the shared common interests of the HOA's members. I have seen it happen hundreds of times which explains why I wrote an inexpensive E-Book that is available on my website that should help members overcome this problem. However, occasionally, some Boards deliberately commit Fraud, defined as a wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. A Board engaged in fraud will try to hide it until its State's Statute of Limitations prevents members from filing a lawsuit against the HOA's individuals serving on the Board of Directors who committed the fraud. Although the tolling period refers to the number of years that a complaint can be filed against a party that has committed fraud, in rare cases, the tolling period has been extended if the fraud could not be identified before the normal tolling period ended. In the latter case, the following published article may be useful. The article below refers to fraud committed against investors who owned stock; but the U.S. Supreme and Appellate Courts have also addressed this issue for HOAs.
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" Nov 18, 2020 · As American Law Reports (ALR) explains, courts have held that “in actions for relief on the ground of fraud, the bar of the applicable statute of limitations commences to run only from discovery or from when, with reasonable diligence, there ought to have been a discovery of the facts constituting the fraud.” 172 A.L.R. 265. (source: https://www.talkovlaw.com/fraud-statute-of-limitations-california)." This website also referred to