TAMPA, Fla. — Residents of a local homeowner's association community are fed up with paying big bucks to their association’s lawyer for what they say is unnecessary litigation.
“The board doesn’t have to worry about it, because it’s not their money. It's our money,” said John Altman, who is a resident who lives in that HOA neighborhood.
The I-Team has uncovered lawsuits involving two different HOA board elections in a single community have cost residents hundreds of thousands of dollars.
First lawsuit involved the 2019 HOA Board election
With more than 1,800, The Plantation of Carrollwood is one of Hillsborough County’s largest deed-restricted communities.
It has a clubhouse, two pools, soccer fields and a full-time staff.
“A community this size is larger than some of the cities in Florida,” said homeowner Ryan Munson.
Plantation residents John Altman and Ryan Munson contacted the I-Team after seeing our stories about what happened in the Creek View community, where a woman ended up in jail after what started as HOA violations, and another homeowner faced thousands in legal fees over complaints about her paint.
The same attorney, Francis Friscia, and the same property manager, Ron Trowbridge, who were involved in the Creek View Court cases as work for the Plantation HOA.
Munson’s court battle with the Plantation Homeowners Association started when he ran for the HOA board in 2019.
Before the election, he says he learned there were questionable election activities at the HOA office while families were signing up kids for the community’s annual soccer program.
“They quickly find out if someone is a resident. And they will then ask them how are you voting this year? And they will on the spot say hey, we need you to vote for this person, this person and this person,” Munson said.
Munson says HOA staff handed homeowners proxies to fill out on the spot.
Proxy voting was not allowed under the HOA's bylaws, but the board had been doing it that way for years... re-electing many of the same leaders repeatedly.
Complaint made to DBPR
When election day came, there was not a quorum, which is required under Florida’s HOA law.
Munson filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), which investigates HOA election complaints.
“DBPR, they looked at everything. They looked at how everything was filed. How the election was run. They ran through everything and they said have a new election," Munson said.
Their decision was considered binding.
A new election would have cost homeowners little, but the HOA board and their attorney Francis Friscia chose to appeal instead, hiring another attorney to argue the case before the Florida Second District Court of Appeals.
Judge: “This isn't like ‘we just messed up a little bit’”
“You add hour upon hour upon hour upon hour, it becomes a sticking point real quickly,” Altman said.
The case was not heard by the 2nd DCA until two years after the election.
“Those are two pretty serious things. This isn’t like ‘we just messed up a little bit’. I mean no quorum. And the bulk... I think 70 percent or something... were absentee ballots... of which there’s no provision. That’s pretty serious,” said Judge Robert Morris.
“Essentially, they’re taking a position that what we say goes and you can’t appeal us. Our position is there’s no statutory basis for that and that violates our right to access the courts,” said Attorney John Cavaliere, the attorney representing Plantation Homeowners HOA in the appeal.
“We’re talking about an election that took place in August of 2019. And we filed and we proceeded expeditiously through the arbitration process. Now, here we are sitting in May of 2021, and we still don’t have a decision,” said attorney Stephanie Martin, who represented Munson in the appeal.
“Isn’t your real remedy just that you have another election?” said Judge Morris.
“So it’s our position that it’s not necessary to have another election,” Cavaliere said.
“You’d rather come up on appeal and wait a long time for a decision? This is beyond the scope of why we’re here, but when I read this, I kept saying why don’t they just have another election?” Morris said.
HOA had to pay homeowner’s legal bills
The HOA lost their appeal, meaning they had to pay Munson’s legal bills in addition to their own.
We asked him how much it all added up to.
“So well over $100,000 because they filed with the Second District Court of Appeals and I had to pay for that as well,” Munson said.
That’s more than twice as much as the $49,000 Munson paid for his home in 1995.
Second lawsuit involved allegations of fraudulent proxy
The Plantation HOA Board sued another homeowner in 2022 for allegedly filing a fraudulent proxy by signing the name of a homeowner who had died.
Altman said the suit involved just one ballot and would not have changed the outcome of the election.
Yet that case has been in court for three years and has 315 docket entries... nearly twice as many court events as the Terri Schiavo guardianship case that got worldwide attention in the early 1990s, which only had 182 filings.
The HOA’s filings included affidavits, depositions, subpoenas and dozens of exhibits.
The HOA lost the case, appealed it and had it dismissed by the Second District Court of Appeals.
That suit is currently active, with a docket entry filed as recently as July 24, 2025.
“They’re spending an awful lot of money trying to defend a lawsuit that they have already lost,” Altman said.
HOA spent $291k more than budgeted for “legal special matters”
Altman provided us with the HOA's annual budgets from 2020-2024, showing the board spent $291,000 more than it budgeted for “legal special matters” during that time.
Altman said that money would be better spent on something else.
“That’s kind of what we’re arguing about, is why are you spending all this money when we have things you could do, like for one, not raising your monthly maintenance fees,” Altman said.
A homeowner questioned Plantation’s property manager Ron Trowbridge about budget shortfalls at the April HOA meeting.
At that meeting, Plantation HOA Property Manager Ron Trowbridge was asked by a homeowner if the HOA was taking money from the reserve fund to make up for budget shortfalls.
“Last year, that might have happened on a couple of occasions, yeah,” Trowbridge said.
The amount was $167,000 last year and $94,000 the previous year, according to an annual accounting.
Only three of nine board members were at that meeting.
“The money is there to be utilized for the community. For improvement of the community. Not to sit in the bank,” HOA President Tony Rivera said at the meeting.
“For them to transfer money out of reserves requires a vote by the membership. And they’re just not doing that,” Altman said.
We emailed the HOA’s attorney Francis Friscia who said he couldn’t talk about the cases because one is still pending.
Neither property manager Ron Trowbridge nor HOA President Tony Rivera responded to interview requests.
Munson got a big chunk of that money after the HOA lost its appeal.
“Eventually they did give me back $80,000... well less than what I paid,” Munson said.
He said that $80,000, which paid him back for his legal fees, came from money he and his neighbors paid in monthly HOA dues.
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