183 Homeowners Being sued

[justicebe40]

I live in Jeffersonville, Indiana. 5 years ago our neighborhood was forced to create an association. Not many people were interested, but there were leadership appointed. None of the leadership collected, so it's been inactive. The purpose of forcing the association to form was to create an entity who would be responsible for paying for drainage to be maintained.
5 years later, 183 of us are being sued for $50 per year by Oak Park Conservancy (since our homeowner's association has not collected, and has remained inactive), for the past however long we have lived there. They want to include 15% interest for every year, as well as attorney fees.
We have never been billed. The summons (thrown on our front porch) is the first we have heard of this.
A few questions:

1. Is the statute of limitations limited to 6 years? Would it fall under the following law?
1IC 34-11-2-7
Six year limitation
Sec. 7. The following actions must be commenced within six (6) years after the cause of action accrues:
(1) Actions on accounts and contracts not in writing.
(2) Actions for use, rents, and profits of real property.
(3) Actions for injuries to property other than personal property, damages for detention of personal property and for recovering possession of personal property.
(4) Actions for relief against frauds.
As added by P.L.1-1998, SEC.6.

2. Can I choose to pay my requested portion prior to showing to court, essentially settling out of court, to avoid paying the attorney fee, thus having Oak Park Conservancy eat the cost of the attorney fee, since they are the ones who chose to use an attorney as a bill-collector? I do not feel I should pay any attorney fee since this was the first notification of any drainage cost.

3. (if #2 is possible) In the summons, they state that we can just have it paid on our next tax filing, but could I refuse that, have the client send me a bill and pay direct, cutting out any work an attorney would have to do?

There is a lot involved in this, and I apologize if I am keeping it too general. Basically, I don't like the approach of suing prior to any type of attempted bill collecting. I've seen 30 day late, 60 day late, 90 day late boxes on bills, but never a 9 year late box, and it irritates me that someone can just suddenly say "Ok, you owe $15000 among the 183 of you for up to the past 9 years." Any advice is appreciated! I would like to share any feasible advice with my neigbors, so we all thank you.

 

[HomeGuru]

I live in Jeffersonville, Indiana. 5 years ago our neighborhood was forced to create an association. Not many people were interested, but there were leadership appointed. None of the leadership collected, so it's been inactive. The purpose of forcing the association to form was to create an entity who would be responsible for paying for drainage to be maintained.
5 years later, 183 of us are being sued for $50 per year by Oak Park Conservancy (since our homeowner's association has not collected, and has remained inactive), for the past however long we have lived there. They want to include 15% interest for every year, as well as attorney fees.
We have never been billed. The summons (thrown on our front porch) is the first we have heard of this.
A few questions:

1. Is the statute of limitations limited to 6 years? Would it fall under the following law?
1IC 34-11-2-7
Six year limitation
Sec. 7. The following actions must be commenced within six (6) years after the cause of action accrues:
(1) Actions on accounts and contracts not in writing.
(2) Actions for use, rents, and profits of real property.
(3) Actions for injuries to property other than personal property, damages for detention of personal property and for recovering possession of personal property.
(4) Actions for relief against frauds.
As added by P.L.1-1998, SEC.6.

2. Can I choose to pay my requested portion prior to showing to court, essentially settling out of court, to avoid paying the attorney fee, thus having Oak Park Conservancy eat the cost of the attorney fee, since they are the ones who chose to use an attorney as a bill-collector? I do not feel I should pay any attorney fee since this was the first notification of any drainage cost.

3. (if #2 is possible) In the summons, they state that we can just have it paid on our next tax filing, but could I refuse that, have the client send me a bill and pay direct, cutting out any work an attorney would have to do?

There is a lot involved in this, and I apologize if I am keeping it too general. Basically, I don't like the approach of suing prior to any type of attempted bill collecting. I've seen 30 day late, 60 day late, 90 day late boxes on bills, but never a 9 year late box, and it irritates me that someone can just suddenly say "Ok, you owe $15000 among the 183 of you for up to the past 9 years." Any advice is appreciated! I would like to share any feasible advice with my neigbors, so we all thank you.

**A: there must be a recorded deed restriction or some other document spelling out the drainage maintenance and liability. That's your answer. The document would prevail and the statutes of limitations would not apply. There is a lot more to this than what you have provided. It is not Oak Park's problem that the HOA is inactive and no one was collecting the money. If the HOA did not collect the fees, each member owner of the Association is still responsible. Each of the 183 members should have and could have paid the fee on their own rather than using the excuse that there was no HOA collecting the fees. And you do not have to be billed in order to pay. You knew what the fee was. Lastly, $50 a year for nine years is not a lot of money. And neither is the interest. This is not a case you are going to win.