email inspection

Started by VC • 8 replies • 85 views

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VC (Florida(FS 720))
Posts: 118

Posted:

Hi,

Let's say the HOA emails are located on the management company server (as usually is the case). In Florida, emails on the server are part of the official records and are therefore inspectable. We are talking here about a resident request to inspect, not a litigation discovery, an important nuance.

The Florida statute requires only existing documents be available for inspection, not creating new ones like compiling, summarizing, searching etc.

The request: "all emails referencing landscape and irrigation" would mean (in my opinion) creating a new document by searchin gand filtering over seven years. There is no specific "Landscape" folder or any other subject organized one.

What should the HOA do with a request like this ?

Thanks.

TimB4 (Tennessee)
Posts: 21,044

Posted:

Depending on your email program, It is possible to search emails for Landscaping in the subject line or the body of the email.
Mine is under edit - find - search messages
That is not creating a new document, that is searching and gathering the existing documents.

They are obviously looking for something specific.
It might be easier to simply ask them what is it they are looking for specifically so you can assist them.

VC (Florida(FS 720))
Posts: 118

Posted:

Tim,

The owners are trying to claim irrigation/landscape negligence and want to collect all relevant emails.

We are happy to let the owner inspect emails, but it's not a simple search by keywords. We need to collect all relevant emails from two archives from the two previous management companies that I am not sure are even readable any more, and then sanitize the emails for privileged/private information.

If the request were: "Give me emails for Aug 2025 with the landscape related discussion", then no problem, but with a request formulated as "Give me all emails for the last 7 years discussing landscaping" then it becomes a discovery project.

Clearly they are unwilling to be more specific, hence my question.

ElleN (Idaho)
Posts: 1,289

Posted:

I see that Florida has rulings saying emails will tend to count as a HOA's official records. On the other hand, FS 720.304 (5) (g) has limits on this. I would scour the latter statute section. Then I would come up with a brief reply explaining the cost of (1) searching the emails; and (2) removing privileged and private information. Make no mistake: Your lawyer would have to scour the emails.

I opine that your HOA should follow the law but OTOH, because of the expense involved here, resist the request for all emails. Explain the situation to the owners. Tell the owners they have to narrow their request mightily. E.g. all records containing the words ___, ____ and ____. Tell the owners they will have to pay for any labor by the manager exceeding one-half hour where the manager has to copy and paste the relevant paragraphs from emails. They they will have to pay the attorney fees. Come up with an estimate. Explain that the HOA very much wants to follow the law re inspection of records but the requesters have to follow the law too.

VC (Florida(FS 720))
Posts: 118

Posted:

ElleN,

There's this arbitration decision, but I am not sure it's enough to persuade the owners to narrow the email inspection scope:
"
Rose v. The Village of Kings Creek Condo. Ass'n, Inc. (DBPR Arb. Case No. 2005-01-9934 & Case No. 2008-03-7422): In this case, a unit owner requested specific categories of financial records and wanted the association to gather and compile them. The DBPR Arbitrator ruled in favor of the association, explicitly stating:

"The Association is not required to create new records to gather all information identified by categories in a request to inspect."
The arbitrator noted that an owner’s right to inspect records does not mean they can force the association's bookkeeper, property manager, or board to sit down, do research, and generate a new summary or compilation document that did not previously exist.
"
https://www2.myfloridalicense.com/lsc/arbitration/allorders/2008037422.pdf

We'll talk to out attorney on Monday, I just wanted to see where we stand before the conversation.

ElleN (Idaho)
Posts: 1,289

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By VC on 05/30/2026, 11:24 AM

Tim,

The owners are trying to claim irrigation/landscape negligence and want to collect all relevant emails.

Let's be clear about any accusation of "negligence":

If the owners making this request seem to be suggesting in any way that they might sue for negligence, then this records request must go to the HOA attorney, and the HOA insurer must be informed. The HOA attorney and insurer then decide what email records the owners get.

If this HOA has all the minutes from the years in question, plus all the financial statements regarding landscaping, and these records are being provided to the owners, then IMO for the emails, the owners need to back off.

Also keep in mind that owners asking for emails are almost assuredly not studied on the law regarding "negligence" here. Which means they are mostly wasting the HOA Board's time and the HOA's money.

BillD16 (Texas)
Posts: 940

Posted:

Here in Texas (which is not Florida) the Texas Property Code explicitly states that the HOA is not required to generate new documents. It also discusses costs that can be charged / must be paid in advance. I agree with ElleN that this needs to go to the HOA attorney. “Sanitizing” the email to remove personal information could take a considerable amount of time and effort.

Regarding the complexity of searching the emails, I’ll mention that I’ve been playing with a certain AI engine recently, and it offers the ability to talk to my email account (conveniently hosted by the same company that offers the AI engine). It made me a bit nervous to let it touch my email, but it was fairly good at searching beyond the usual “landscape OR landscaping” AND (watermelons OR ‘Santa Clarus’)” conditionals that most email systems provide. It might be helpful. Of course, the state of AI these days is that you still need to check most things for accuracy.

Bill

HOA Board ex-President
Austin, Texas USA

“You can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor”

JeffT2 (Iowa)
Posts: 874

Posted:

After reading Bill's post I asked AI: what ai is best for searching a large text file full of emails and extracting certain info and reporting the results with quotes from the email? Posting the result here failed due to "Validation failed," so do the search yourself. However, here is the suggested prompt

Use a System Prompt: Give the AI a specific role and strict instructions. For example: "You are an expert data analyst. Read the attached email file and extract [Target Info]. Report the results in a table, and include exact quotes from the emails to support each data point."

Double-check outputs: Because LLMs can sometimes hallucinate, always verify the quotes against the original text file.

JackS20 (North Carolina)
Posts: 258

Posted:

what happens when you change management companies? you loose all your email records? Seems like it woudl better for the HOA to have it's own freee archive. We use google workspace for all of our emails. oweners are all allowed to come look whenever they want. emails dealing with violations and/or late dues are not on that server.

google is unliukely to loose all your emails.

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