For this week’s Guest Post Friday here at Musings, I welcome back a good friend. John Tarley is an attorney with the Williamsburg law firm of Tarley Robinson, PLC. John is the managing partner for the firm and leads the firm’s business and litigation practices. A large part of the firm’s practice involves the representation of homeowners’ associations. In his spare time, John teaches two classes a semester as an adjunct at the William & Mary Law School, serves as the 9th Judicial Circuit’s representative on the Virginia State Bar Council where he serves as Vice-Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, and is the editor of the Tarley Robinson blog and the @TarleyRobinson twitter account. Megan Scanlon, an associate with Tarley Robinson (and also an adjunct at W&M Law), provided substantial analytical, drafting and editing assistance with this post.
We see many news articles about a big, bad homeowners’ association interfering with Harry Homeowner’s “right” to live peacefully in his neighborhood. Whether it is demanding the removal of a flag pole that is too tall or forcing an owner to paint a faded mailbox, the stories we read often leave us asking the question: Why don’t they just leave that poor owner alone?
