Dealing with excessive owner emails

Do you have an owner that writes excessive emails about all sorts of issues to everyone on the Committee? You know the sort of owner we mean, the one that dashes out 500 words at 2am on a Saturday morning demanding a response “this instant!”.

The Body Corporate has power to make by-laws that relate to the use and enjoyment of the lots and the common property.

It is contrary to the Act to create a nuisance or to unreasonably interfere with another owner or occupiers use of their lot or the common property.

Committee members are volunteers and in the overwhelming majority of cases are not paid.

It is a common occurrence for there to be at least one prolific email or letter writer in a community titles scheme who almost inevitably ends up complaining about just about everything.

The Body Corporate’s job is to administer the Community Titles Scheme in accordance with the Act. It’s not the job of the committee, or any member of the committee, to be abused, insulted, demeaned or harassed.

Whether you’ve got a by-law or not which prevents that sort of behaviour a lot owner engaging in it can be pursued for creating a nuisance or an unreasonable interference as described above.

It is a relatively straight forward process, however, to introduce a by-law which prohibits the offensive behaviour and then to use the by-law enforcement process if there is a breach.

As with any other by-law, a breach may allow the issue of a by-law contravention notice followed ultimately by proceedings for a private prosecution in the Magistrates Court. Aside from being very embarrassing for the lot owner concerned, fines of over $2,000 may be imposed upon the offending individual.

Well drafted by-laws give the Committee the power to introduce restrictions, including for example in relation to the volume and type of correspondence that the committee may receive and when.

This article was contributed by Michael Kleinschmidt of Stratum Legal.