A Qld resident asks how the body corporate deals with a lot owner in their building who send bullying emails. Chris Irons, Hynes Legal provides the following response.
Question: How can the body corporate handle a lot owner who has a recurring habit of sending immature and bullying emails to anyone they have had a disagreement with?
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I belong to a complex of 80 apartments. One owner has a recurring habit of sending immature and bullying emails to anyone they have had a disagreement with, no matter how mild.
How can the body corporate address this?
Answer: Draw a clear distinction between ‘body corporate stuff’ and ‘life stuff’ by creating an email only for body corporate business.
Unfortunately this is a very familiar query.
Let’s be clear: being ‘immature’ is not a capital offence. Nor is it against any body corporate legislative provision. It’s just really, really annoying and pointless.
‘Bullying’ is also not specifically covered under body corporate legislation, although there may be some action you can take in that regard, which I’ll get to shortly.
First step: ignore. Or better still, set your email spam filters to block said emails. You might also like to know there is no obligation on owners to provide their email addresses for the roll – although of course, it’s very convenient to do so. Perhaps another step therefore is to create an email only for body corporate business and don’t use your personal one. Create a clear distinction between ‘body corporate stuff’ and ‘life stuff’.
Second step: talk to the offending party. If it is safe to do so of course. If you feel threatened or think that talking to the person might cause a safety issue, don’t do it. Put the issues on the table and request they change what they do. Odd as it may seem, sometimes people aren’t aware that their behaviour is causing a problem.
If things persist, consider looking at the resources of the Federal Government eSafety Commissioner. There’s an option there to report abuse.
If the behaviour is criminal – e.g., threats or things get physical – that should be reported to the Police.
From a body corporate perspective, the body corporate can initiate by-law or nuisance proceedings against an owner in certain situations. These are very prescriptive processes and it is essential you both follow these to the letter or the law and also ensure you’ve gone through the motions of trying to solve this yourself. All of that is required under law. The body corporate may need to take legal advice on these points.
If you are the recipient of the behaviour which is in breach of a by-law, you can either request the body corporate do something about it – again, there’s a prescriptive process – or do something yourself, against that offending party.
If your body corporate doesn’t already have by-laws to address this situation, it might need to consider a motion for a by-law about the behaviour you describe. This requires a motion to pass at a general meeting and a new community management statement registered and take effect.
Let me ask you this: do you know much about where this person’s behaviour comes from? Do you know if, for example, they have a medical condition? Are they in a stressful life situation? Do they have capacity issues or perhaps a disability? Is there a language barrier? Is there some other issue prompting the behaviour? It is worth asking these questions as often they will help determine how to address the problem.
Finally, you might want to consider alternative dispute resolution. Mediation can help untie the knots that lead to this kind of behaviour and also might prevent it from occurring in future. It’s certainly something I can advise upon and assist with in my role here and based upon my 5 years as Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management, where I saw this kind of thing a lot.
Chris Irons
E: [email protected]
P: 07 3193 0500
W: Hynes Legal
This post appears in Strata News #360.
Have a question about bullying emails from lot owners or something to add to the article? Leave a comment below.
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The problem I have with your reply to the concerns over “bullying emails”, is that you may have missed the underlying reasons these have been sent.
With no inquiry whatsoever, you immediately launch into the possibility the writer has “medical issues”.
Well, we here in a 24 unit WA complex, could be framed the same way.
There is a cabal of Owners on our Council who get themselves re-elected by forming a solid voting block.
Once in office, little if anything gets acted upon, no matter how dire the reports are from ourselves. Their strategy appears to be ignore all communication.
So we are left with little choice but to repeatedly send emails, reminding them of their responsibilities.
And so the number grows to a large amount, all ignored. We continue sending anyways, mainly for the expected litigation.
Were any of these few hundred emails bullying? That is in the eye of the beholder. Reminding an office holder of their elected duties can hardly constitute “bullying”.
I wish you could amend your reply to “bullying emails” to account for ALL possibilities, including a little self reflection on the reasons why.
Thanks to those who replied. To expect a reply within a week “or so” shows the email has been read at least, even if a satisfactory answer has not been delivered. To be ignored is not reasonable. I have been on the committee – three years in fact, and l believe we treated owners with respect. To suggest committee members be removed is trite as that cannot be done easily, and to equate a body corporate’s committee decision making is as important as a decision made by the Prime Minister or the Queen is quite ridiculous. My personal opinion is that if you are elected by owners to be on the committee, you owe it to the owners to work for them. As l heard Frank Higgenson say once ” the letters contained within committee, also spell commit”.
I can’t for the life of my understand how the Attorney General’s department allows unqualified Strata Managers to call themselves Managers, but cannot be called to account for their breaches , no repercussions unless you go to a commissioner at great cost and inconvenience.
They can enforce their terms as part of their contracted services but those terms don’t always comply with the BCCM legislation and there is nothing the commissioners officers can do about it. These same people manager strata bank accounts take instructions only from the chairman ,(per their contract) as these people are usually the influencer, in them getting their contract renewed. As for the rest of the work the Commissioners office does , is to recite verbatim the legislation that no one can enforce.
This legislation does not protect the owners in strata complexes, it protects the committee and the strata manager.
You politely ask them to stop and be business- like in their emails. Suggest they can address anything personal with others with people themselves privately. Advise in future emails will not be answered or accepted unless they are civil.
Buy a house get out of body corporates they are nothing but trouble the queensland government are not
interested or serious about fixing problems because they make huge income from stamp duty on the sale of properties when bullied owners are forced to sell out to gain some sanity in there lives. The only way this rotten industry will ever be cleaned up is through a Royal Commission.
What avenues are open to a resident owner if the committee is behaving unreasonably to a request. The committee is elected to work for and on behalf of owners (even if they are volunteers), so surely an owner has the right to expect an answer to a request within say a week or so, rather than being fobbed off with either no reply, or a response that the matter will be tabled and dealt with at the next meeting. Which could be 3-4 months away. Committees meet informally, make and act on decisions, and ratify those sometime later, when convenient. This timeframe is not always acceptable.
Completely agree with you. What if Committee are corrupted and only focusing on misusing capital fund to their own benefits (e.g placing pergola for their unit) and disapprove any request for common property repair by unreasonably? Is there anything to prevent being bullied by committee members rather than going to mediation?
Hi Lesley
If the committee is approached through the strata manager a decision might be possible more quickly. Committee members are not always experts and it is the function of the manager to direct them to the legislative framework and assist them to understand it.
Depending on the legislation in your State, and the type of request you are making, a valid decision might be voted upon electronically and the consensus conveyed to you by the manager.
However, it sounds like the committee has a regular meetings, so planning ahead will be helpful when you need responses more urgently.
If on the other hand, there really is an issue with unnecessary delay for simple matters, talk to the strata manager about how to be nominated to the committee next AGM and see what they actually do to ensure the strata company makes decisions in the best interests of all owners… and assist to put in place systems to speed up processes.
Good luck.
Hi Lesley
The following response has been provided by Chris Irons, Hynes Legal:
Why is there a right to expect a response in a week? I can think of plenty of instances in government and in the private sector in which responses in a week are not only unreasonable, they are completely impractical. You wouldn’t expect a response from the Prime Minister or the Queen within a week. So why would a committee be different?
Committees need to act reasonably in all instances but ‘acting reasonably’ does not equate to ‘service on demand’. As you correctly point out they are volunteers and presumably all have outside lives. There is no set timeframe for responses and nor is there a set number of meetings, or frequency of meetings, a committee must have.
With that in mind, I’d suggest the following:
– If the issue is urgent enough to warrant a 1-week turnaround, then those reasons should be given in the request or at least, conveyed to the committee
– If the committee either doesn’t response or responds but you think that response is unreasonable, you can challenge that via the Commissioner’s Office – but my points above will be relevant
– If you don’t like the way the committee does things, you can seek to have them removed. That can be done via ordinary resolution at a general meeting
– Of course, if you think you could do a better job, you could consider running for a committee position yourself when that opportunity arises