Academy/Board Succession & Institutional Memory
Litigation histories
The written record of every dispute your board has faced, and why the minutes alone will not pass it on.
A litigation history is a written record of every lawsuit, arbitration, or formal dispute your association has been part of, past and pending, kept separately from the minutes. Incoming boards need it to answer insurance applications accurately and to understand disputes the minutes recorded but never explained.
What belongs in a litigation history
For every lawsuit, arbitration, mediation, or serious formal dispute, whether it involved an owner, a contractor, a vendor, or a neighboring association, record who was involved, what the dispute was about, when it started, its current status, and how it was resolved or where it stands. Include the attorney and insurance carrier involved, if any.
This has to live outside the minutes, because the minutes were never built to hold it.
"Minutes are a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said."
Source: Robert's Rules of Order, Frequently Asked Questions, Robert's Rules Association
A vote to retain counsel shows up in the minutes. The reasoning behind it, the settlement terms, the lesson learned, does not. A new board reading old minutes alone will find that a dispute happened, with no way to learn why it mattered.
Why it matters at your next D&O renewal
Insurance applications for directors and officers coverage commonly ask about prior claims and circumstances the board already knows about. A board that cannot answer accurately because the person who remembered the dispute has rotated off is guessing on a form that matters.
How a specific policy treats a claim it was never told about varies by carrier and by the policy's own language. Keep the litigation history current, and ask your broker how your policy handles disclosure before you need the answer, not after.
This is practice, not law
No statute located for this Course requires an association to keep a litigation history, and none of the governing-document layers above it mandate one either. It sits at the fourth layer: the operational habits that no law requires but that determine whether the next board actually knows what the last one knew.
"The company retains knowledge, history, and business relationships."
Source: Passing the torch: Why succession planning is essential for community association professionals, Community Associations Institute
That framing was written about management companies, but the risk is the same for a volunteer board: a dispute nobody wrote down is a dispute the next board relearns the hard way. CAI publishes a separate resource, Transition Best Practices for HOAs, worth reading directly if you want a broader transition checklist beyond litigation.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
A new board inherits a case where the minutes show only a vote to retain counsel. What should they do to actually understand the dispute?
Your D&O renewal application asks about prior claims and known circumstances, and nobody on the current board remembers a dispute from three years ago. What is the right move?
A departing treasurer says the board does not need a written litigation history because no law requires one. Is that accurate?
Sources
- Robert's Rules of Order, Frequently Asked Questions, Robert's Rules Association
- Passing the torch: Why succession planning is essential for community association professionals, Community Associations Institute (CAI)
- Transition Best Practices for HOAs, Community Associations Institute (CAI)
Board Succession & Institutional Memory
Next, see how a decision log captures the reasoning that minutes and litigation histories both leave out.
Whether your state's official records law even names litigation files as a required category varies by state, and how your specific D&O policy treats a claim it was never told about varies by carrier and policy language. Check your own records statute and ask your broker.