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This is how the Plaintiff's attorney would introduce the case to a jury. The names of the parties have been changed. Refer to the key below.
Ladies and gentlemen, this case begins with a form. One page. A few sentences. A legal obligation.
When you buy a home in a community governed by a homeowners' association in Nevada, the law requires that you be told the truth about that community before you commit. You have to be told the association's rules, its financial condition, and any pending lawsuits. This type of information can provide a critical warning sign to buyers. A lawsuit specifically means someone has gone to court and said: this organization is not operating fairly or lawfully. A buyer has a right to know that before they sign.
And because that information matters so much, the law gives every buyer a five-day window after receiving that disclosure to cancel the purchase. No questions asked. No penalty. Just: here is the information, here is your exit, use it if you need it.
In March 2023, Plaintiff was shopping for a home. He and his real estate agent were comparing properties — they had a list. On March 13th he made an offer on a condominium. The next day — March 14th — he received the required disclosure package from the HOA and its management company. He and his real estate agent read it. In the section on litigation, it said, in all capital letters: "THERE ARE NO KNOWN OUTSTANDING JUDGMENTS OR PENDING, ONGOING LITIGATION/LAWSUITS AT THIS TIME."
No concerns. He proceeded. He closed on April 5th, 2023. He paid $172,000 for the property.
That statement in the disclosure was false. And the people who prepared it knew it — they had to know it.
Five months before that disclosure was sent to Plaintiff, Crestwood HOA had been sued in what we'll call the Porter lawsuit. Defendants had been formally served with that lawsuit. Their lawyers had filed a formal answer in court. The case had been pending for months. It was being discussed at HOA board meetings. An employee of the management company received the lawsuit when it was formally served. And yet the disclosure said: nothing to see here.
Now, the defense will tell you that the Porter lawsuit was eventually dismissed — that no judgment was entered, no lien was recorded, and therefore Plaintiff wasn't harmed by not knowing about it. Ladies and gentlemen, that argument gets it exactly backwards. The question is not what ultimately happened in that lawsuit. The question is what Plaintiff was entitled, by law, to know — and what he would have done if he had known about it when he was deciding whether to buy.
So let me tell you what was in that lawsuit.
The Porter lawsuit alleged that this HOA ignored a resident who had properly completed the association's own paperwork to participate in a state protection program during COVID — to help him keep his home. Despite that, the HOA continued assessing fines against him in violation of state law. It failed to notify him of those fines. It didn't properly credit his payments. He went to court because this HOA was not following the law and was not responding to the people it was supposed to serve.
That is what was pending when Plaintiff received his disclosure. That is what he was not told. That is what his five-day window was meant to protect him from having to discover the hard way.
He discovered it the hard way.
Two months after closing — in June 2023 — Plaintiff received his first violation notice from this HOA. It was for allegedly not breaking down cardboard boxes before putting them in the dumpster. The fine was $250. Under Nevada law, the maximum fine for a first violation is $100.
He also received a notice about a sunshade on his patio. When Plaintiff attended the hearing in August, the board confirmed that the prior owner had never been fined for the same shade in the same location. Plaintiff requested records to understand why he was being treated differently than the prior owner. He received no response. No documents. Nothing.
You will hear that this same sunshade appears in a photograph of this property from 2017 — six years before Plaintiff ever owned it. It was there when the prior owner listed the property for sale. It was there, readily visible, through any HOA inspection conducted from 2017 until Plaintiff purchased the property. The HOA never said a word about it. Until Plaintiff.
Then, in April 2024, Plaintiff learned that the HOA had been fining him $100 every single week — retroactive to thirty days after the August hearing — without ever notifying him. He didn't receive a letter. He didn't receive a notice. The fines simply accumulated in silence. By the time he sold the property in September 2024, those fines had grown to $3,277.61 — and he was required to pay every dollar of it as a condition of closing.
Ladies and gentlemen, compare what the Porter lawsuit alleged to what Plaintiff experienced.
The Porter lawsuit said: the HOA ignored a resident's lawful participation in a state protection program and kept fining him in violation of state law. Plaintiff experienced: an illegal fine of $250 on his very first violation — more than double the statutory maximum — contested in writing and applied anyway.
The Porter lawsuit said: the HOA failed to notify the resident of fines being assessed. Plaintiff experienced: $100 per week in fines accumulating for months with no notice whatsoever.
The Porter lawsuit said: the HOA didn't respond to requests and didn't follow its own procedures. Plaintiff experienced: a complete non-response to two written records requests made under Nevada law — requests that were never answered before he was forced to sell.
The HOA concealed the Porter lawsuit from Plaintiff. What they were concealing was a description of themselves.
Plaintiff's real estate agent — Ms. Williams — will testify that she represented him in this purchase. She reviewed the disclosure package. She would have flagged any disclosed litigation and encouraged him to investigate further. Plaintiff only had what the HOA provided to make his decision. If the disclosure had been accurate, she would have flagged it. He would have investigated. He would have read that lawsuit. And he would have exercised his five-day right to cancel and purchased one of the other properties he and his agent were actively considering that same week.
Instead, he was denied that choice. He was placed — through a false statement on a form — into a community that operated exactly the way that hidden lawsuit warned. He spent $172,000 to buy a property. He spent nearly $10,000 more in closing costs. He endured nearly two years of improper fines, stonewalled records requests, and illegal enforcement practices. And when he finally sold — because continued ownership promised more of the same — he sold at a loss and paid over $22,000 in sale fees to get out.
The defendants had one obligation: tell the truth on a form the law required them to fill out accurately. They failed. And Plaintiff has been paying for that failure ever since.
At the end of this case, we will ask you to hold them accountable for it.
This is how the Defense attorney would introduce their side of the case to the jury.
Ladies and gentlemen, Plaintiff has brought you a case built almost entirely on what he says he would have done — and almost nothing on what actually happened to him.
Here is what is not disputed: a document in the resale package did not list a pending lawsuit. We acknowledge that. But this case is not about whether the statement was complete. It is about whether Plaintiff was actually harmed by it. And when you look at the evidence, the answer is no.
The lawsuit Plaintiff claims he should have been told about — the Porter case — was dismissed. No judgment was entered against the association. No lien was recorded against Plaintiff's property. No encumbrance. Nothing. Plaintiff himself testified at his deposition that the Porter litigation had no financial impact on his property whatsoever. He acknowledged that he could have lived in that community before, during, and after that lawsuit and never known the difference.
So what is he actually claiming was damaged? His down payment? He would have made a down payment on whatever house he bought. His closing costs? Same. The loss on his eventual sale? He sold because he had a dispute with the association about an item on his patio — a dispute he could have resolved by simply removing the item. He chose not to. That is not a harm caused by a disclosure form. That is a choice.
He had no prior stated policy against buying in communities with litigation. And when asked at his deposition whether he had any evidence — any document, any prior statement, any communication with anyone — showing that pending HOA litigation would have been a dealbreaker for him, he said no. When asked directly whether he had any documentation that the association or its management intentionally withheld information from him, he answered under oath: "Not at this time." When asked whether he had any evidence that Defendants intended to induce him to act on a misrepresentation, he again answered: "Not at this time." His only evidence is his own word, after the fact, from a man with every financial motive to say exactly that.
The law requires actual damages. It requires causation — a real, traceable link between what the defendants did and what Plaintiff lost. Plaintiff has neither. When Plaintiff himself was asked to identify his damages, he said he was "compelled" to sell the property because of a fine over a sunshade on his patio — a CC&R enforcement dispute that has nothing to do with a resale disclosure. He is not asking you to compensate him for a disclosure failure. He is asking you to compensate him for losing an argument with the HOA about a patio accessory. That is not what the law allows.
In a trial, Plaintiff presents evidence, then the Defense responds. Here are the first two pieces of evidence and the Defense's responses to each.
On March 14, 2023, Defendants provided Plaintiff with a resale package as required by Nevada law. That law requires the package to contain, among other things, "a statement of any unsatisfied judgments or pending legal actions against the association." The package was prepared and delivered by Apex Management on behalf of Crestwood HOA. In the litigation section, a document affirmatively stated: "THERE ARE NO KNOWN OUTSTANDING JUDGMENTS OR PENDING, ONGOING LITIGATION/LAWSUITS AT THIS TIME."
The existence of the document and the statement it contained are not disputed. What is disputed is whether this document played any real role in Plaintiff's decision-making. Plaintiff has produced no contemporaneous evidence — no notes, no emails, no texts, no communications of any kind — showing that he opened the litigation document, reviewed it, or formed any view about it before closing. His only evidence that the disclosure mattered to him is a sworn declaration and a realtor's affidavit, both prepared after this lawsuit was filed.
That statement was false. Defendants had been actively litigating the Porter lawsuit for more than five months before the disclosure was sent. The Porter case was filed July 19, 2022. Defendants were formally served — meaning the lawsuit was legally delivered to them — on September 21, 2022. Their lawyers filed a formal answer in court on October 10, 2022. The case had been pending for five full months before the disclosure went out telling Plaintiff there was nothing there.
The falsity of the statement is not disputed. But falsity alone is not liability. The question is what actually flowed from the omission. The Porter lawsuit was later dismissed without any judgment, lien, or financial consequence to any property in the community. Plaintiff himself found 47 other buyers who received the same false disclosure and also were not notified about the lawsuit. Not one of those 47 people sold their property as a result. Plaintiff is the only one who sold — and by his own testimony, he sold because of a weekly fine over a sunshade on his patio, not because of a missing disclosure.
This was not a one-time mistake. Discovery confirmed that Defendants issued 48 consecutive resale packages — every single package from July 2022 through the end of 2023 — each containing the identical false "no litigation" statement. That covers 18 months and every transaction during that period. The same error, on the same form, across every single transaction for a year and a half.
A pattern of identical disclosures does not establish intent or deliberate concealment. Apex Management's disclosures were processed through a third-party digital platform. The litigation disclosure field in that platform was a template. If the template was never updated after the Porter case was filed, every package would reflect the same stale information — not because anyone was deliberately hiding anything, but because a field in a software system was never changed. Repetition of an administrative oversight is not the same as a scheme to deceive.
Defendants knew about the Porter lawsuit when they sent the disclosure. Apex Management's own written responses to questions identify Ms. Fletcher — an Apex Management employee — as the first person to whom the Porter lawsuit was formally delivered when Defendants were served. Another employee, Ms. Caldwell, had specific authority to draft, review, and edit resale packages during the relevant period. Apex Management also stated in writing that it "consistently cross references its own records with the disclosure platform to ensure that all orders are processed accurately." If that process worked as described, Apex either knew the litigation field was wrong and sent it anyway — or the verification process was never actually carried out.
An employee receiving service of a lawsuit is paperwork landing on one person's desk — not a deliberate organizational decision to hide information from buyers. Ms. Caldwell having editing authority does not establish she reviewed Plaintiff's specific package. Most critically: when asked directly at deposition whether he had any documentation showing that anyone intentionally withheld litigation information from him, Plaintiff answered "Not at this time." When asked whether he had evidence that Defendants intended to induce him to act on a misrepresentation, he again answered "Not at this time." Fraud requires proof of intent. Plaintiff admitted he has none.
Defendants' own board meeting minutes prove institutional awareness. Three days after Defendants filed their answer in the Porter lawsuit, the board minutes record that "the community will be addressing the Judicial Complaint with the attorney for the community." The board minutes from five days before Plaintiff received his disclosure show the same item — adding that "Community Attorney will be present." The Porter lawsuit was on the board's active agenda in the period leading up to and through the moment Plaintiff received his disclosure package. It was not forgotten. It was not dormant. It was being actively managed — and it was still left off the disclosure.
Board meeting minutes discussing litigation with a community attorney reflect the HOA managing its legal defense — not anyone deciding to conceal information from buyers. HOA boards discuss legal matters in virtually every meeting. There is nothing in those minutes showing that anyone at a board meeting ever considered, discussed, or decided whether to include or exclude the Porter lawsuit from resale packages. That decision — if it can even be called a decision — happened at the management company level, through an automated software platform that was never updated.
Board member Mr. Dawson testified that when he attempted to refinance his mortgage, his insurance agent informed him that multiple lawsuits were associated with the association — and that this information should have been disclosed to him. When Mr. Dawson sought the litigation documents from the management company, they refused. When he went directly to HOA leadership, the documents were withheld as if they were "some secret." A sitting board member could not get his own HOA's lawsuit records. This testimony — from inside the organization — shows that treating litigation as something to be concealed was an institutional practice, not an isolated software glitch.
Mr. Dawson's experience describes a board member seeking documents for a personal refinancing transaction — a different context, a different time, and a different request than a prospective buyer receiving an automated statutory disclosure. Whatever happened in that interaction says nothing about the automated process through which Plaintiff's resale package was generated. The digital disclosure platform does not involve a human deciding in real time whether to provide or withhold information. Mr. Dawson's experience cannot substitute for direct evidence of what happened in Plaintiff's transaction.
The court has ruled that the Poole v. Nevada Auto Dealership Invs. legal framework controls the knowledge element of this claim. Under that standard, proving intent to deceive does not require showing that any specific individual sat down and decided to lie to this particular buyer. It requires only that the defendants, as an organization, were aware of the operative facts — that the litigation existed — when they represented that no litigation existed. The circumstantial evidence in this case — the board meeting minutes, the 48-package pattern, the management company employee who received service of the lawsuit, and the same company's control over the resale packages — establishes that organizational awareness. Under the controlling legal standard, that is sufficient.
The defense maintains that even under any applicable standard, Plaintiff's deposition admissions — "Not at this time" to both intent questions — demonstrate that after nearly two years of litigation and full discovery, Plaintiff produced no evidence of intentional conduct. Circumstantial evidence of organizational awareness does not prove that any person made a deliberate choice to mislead this buyer. The legal standard requires more than inference; it requires clear and convincing evidence — the highest civil standard.
Crestwood HOA is the governing body of the community Plaintiff was purchasing into — not a commercial counterparty. Apex Management was Crestwood's professional management company, hired specifically to handle statutory disclosure compliance. A buyer receiving a mandatory disclosure from the very entity that governs the community he is entering places a level of trust in that disclosure that is qualitatively different from any ordinary commercial transaction. When a party voluntarily steps in to provide a disclosure and the recipient places confidence in them because of their position, that party takes on the obligation to be complete and accurate. By preparing and delivering the disclosure package, Defendants assumed that obligation.
The HOA is not Plaintiff's fiduciary — and Nevada law makes this clear. The Nevada Supreme Court in Long v. Towne held directly that a homeowners' association owes no fiduciary obligations to its owners and that the relationship between the two is "no more than that of vendor-vendee." Courts across the country agree. The HOA governs the community; it is not anyone's advisor, trustee, or agent in a property sale. Even under a special relationship standard, the Nevada Supreme Court has found that an owner "reposed no confidence in the association." Plaintiff was a buyer dealing at arm's length — he had alternatives he was actively considering and the ability to investigate independently.
Apex Management charged a fee for processing each resale package — a direct financial interest. It employed staff whose job was to prepare disclosures. It stated in writing that it understood the legal obligation to disclose pending litigation and that it actively verified accuracy. A professional company that correctly understands its legal obligation, charges money for performing it, represents that it actively verifies accuracy, and still delivers the wrong answer on 48 consecutive occasions over 18 months has not exercised reasonable care. That is a failure of professional competence.
Nevada's negligent misrepresentation law is limited to business transactions involving pecuniary loss. The management company's president and Apex Management's PMK have each provided sworn affidavits stating that neither the HOA nor its management companies have any pecuniary interest in supplying the information in a resale package — it is a statutory compliance function, not a commercial service. Plaintiff was also a residential buyer, not a commercial party, and Nevada courts apply this tort narrowly. Beyond that, Plaintiff's reliance argument fails without contemporaneous proof — he produced no notes, emails, or texts showing the disclosure played any role in his decision to close. Post-lawsuit declarations prepared for litigation are not the kind of demonstrated, real-time reliance Nevada courts require.
The court has ruled that a special relationship — not a formal fiduciary relationship — is sufficient to give rise to the duty of full disclosure at the heart of the constructive fraud claim. Whether that special relationship existed here is a question for the jury. The question is this: when a prospective buyer receives a mandatory statutory disclosure package prepared by the very entity that will govern his life as a homeowner — prepared by that entity's professional management company, pursuant to a law that specifically contemplates the association taking over this disclosure role from the seller — is that buyer in a special relationship that creates an obligation of full and accurate disclosure? Plaintiff contends the answer is yes. The HOA and its management company were not strangers; they were the institutional authority over the community Plaintiff was considering joining, and the only source of the information he needed to make his decision.
Even under a special relationship standard, no such relationship existed here. The Nevada Supreme Court has expressly found that an owner "reposed no confidence in the association" in the HOA context. Plaintiff was a buyer dealing at arm's length. He had the ability to search public records, consult an attorney, and investigate independently. The fact that a disclosure was statutorily required does not transform an ordinary transaction into a relationship of special trust. The disclosure obligation belongs to the seller — not the association — and the HOA's voluntary assistance in preparing the package does not elevate the relationship beyond what it ordinarily is.
Nevada law (NRS 116.4109) required the resale package to contain a statement of any pending legal actions against the association. The package stated there were none. The Porter lawsuit was pending. This is a direct statutory violation. Nevada law also gave Plaintiff a five-day window to cancel his purchase after receiving the package. Had the Porter lawsuit been disclosed, Plaintiff would have had the information and the five-day cancellation right to act on it. Both his sworn statement and his real estate agent Ms. Williams's statement confirm pending litigation would have been material to his decision — and that he would not have purchased the property. The false disclosure rendered that five-day window meaningless.
Plaintiff's causation theory collapses under his own evidence: he found 47 other buyers who received the same false disclosure and none of them sold their property. By Plaintiff's own account, he sold because of an ongoing fine over a sunshade — not because of a missing disclosure. A plaintiff who attributes his damages to cause B in his own deposition and in prior court filings cannot ask the jury to award those same damages based on cause A. The Porter lawsuit ended in dismissal with no judgment and no financial consequence to any property. There is nothing to have been harmed by.
Defendants argue that Plaintiff's damages came from a sunshade dispute, not from the false disclosure. But this framing separates what cannot be separated. Plaintiff's damages arise from two connected injuries. The first occurred before he was ever an owner: the false disclosure stripped him of the information he needed and the five-day statutory right to cancel his purchase. That harm was complete at closing — before any sunshade, before any fine.
The second injury unfolded during ownership and flowed from the same institutional pattern. After closing, Defendants repeatedly refused to comply with Plaintiff's lawful records requests under NRS Chapter 116. That refusal was substantiated as a violation by the Nevada Real Estate Division. Defendants' documented, ongoing pattern of non-compliance — failing to provide records, failing to respond to legally required requests, imposing fines while refusing to explain whether the same conduct was enforced against anyone else — demonstrated that they had no intention of operating transparently or fairly. It was that accumulated pattern of non-compliance, building on the original false disclosure that placed him in this community, that ultimately made continued ownership promise more of the same and compelled the sale. The disclosure failure and the subsequent misconduct are not two separate stories — they are one continuous course of conduct.
Plaintiff chose to sell his property because of a $100-per-week fine over a sunshade he could have removed. That is his own testimony, under oath. His prior court filings describe being "compelled to sell" due to the CC&R fine — not due to a missing disclosure from over a year earlier. A plaintiff cannot reframe his damages in litigation to suit his theory after the fact. The false disclosure, even if imperfect, did not force anyone to sell. Of the 48 buyers who received the same disclosure, Plaintiff is the only one who sold — and he told us exactly why.
CARDBOARD BOX VIOLATION — JULY 31, 2023 EMAIL
Two months after closing, Plaintiff received a $250 fine for allegedly not breaking down cardboard boxes before placing them in the community dumpster. The statutory maximum fine for a first violation under Nevada law is $100. The hearing on this violation was held on July 13, 2023 while Plaintiff was traveling and had not yet seen the notice. He first saw the notice on July 24 and received the Result of Hearing letter the very next day — July 25 — with no opportunity to attend or respond.
On July 31, 2023, Plaintiff sent a formal written email disputing the violation and fine. He noted that the violation notice language stated that failure to break down boxes "can result in loss of privilege to amenities and fines" — language that reads as a warning, not a finding. He requested removal of the violation and fine, demanded all transcripts, records, photo, and video evidence from the July 13 hearing, and gave the HOA a ten-business-day deadline to respond. No response was received.
SUNSHADE VIOLATION — AUGUST 28, 2023 CERTIFIED LETTER & EMAIL
The sunshade violation notice was dated June 27, 2023, but postmarked July 28, 2023 — listing a hearing time of 12:47 AM on July 28 with no location and no Zoom link. Despite this defective notice, Plaintiff attended the rescheduled hearing on August 10, 2023. The board told him he had 30 days to submit an ARC application and reposition the shade.
At that hearing, Plaintiff raised the prior owner issue directly and was told — by the board, on the record — that the prior owner was never fined for the same shade in the same location.
On August 28, 2023, Plaintiff sent a formal certified letter (with a simultaneous email) stating that before agreeing to change the placement of the shade, he required the following within ten business days (September 11, 2023):
The letter explicitly stated that failure to produce these records and comply with NRS 116 would result in a complaint to the Nevada Real Estate Division and potential legal action. No response was received by September 11, 2023. Plaintiff followed through on both warnings — he filed the NRED complaint, and eventually this lawsuit.
Beginning in September 2023 — thirty days after the August 10 hearing — the HOA began fining Plaintiff $100 per week for the sunshade. Plaintiff received no notice of these accumulating fines until April 2024. During that entire period, Plaintiff logged into his property account every month to pay his regular HOA assessment. The fines did not appear in his account. He had no way of knowing they were accumulating. By the time he discovered them in April 2024, months of weekly charges had silently built up — charges he only learned about when they were already a significant sum.
Plaintiff had every opportunity to resolve the sunshade issue. He attended the August 10 hearing and was given a clear path forward: submit an ARC application and reposition the shade within 30 days. That was a reasonable remedy. Instead of complying, Plaintiff made the compliance conditional on receiving extensive records — records relating to what the prior owner was or was not told, records that involved other unit owners and that the association was not required to produce under NRS 116.31175(4)(b). Plaintiff created his own impasse by refusing to take a simple corrective action while demanding documents the association had no obligation to provide.
As for the fines that accumulated: Plaintiff knew from the August hearing that a fine was possible if he did not comply within 30 days. The association applied its rules consistently. That the fines accumulated over several months reflects Plaintiff's own decision not to reposition the shade — a decision that remained within his control at every step.
Nevada law (NRS 116.31175) requires associations and management companies to produce association records to unit owners upon request. Plaintiff first requested records in August 2023 — and followed up in writing, explicitly citing the law and demanding production within ten business days. Full production never occurred. Had Plaintiff received the association's complete violation history, he could have determined whether the fines being imposed on him were applied uniformly to all owners — or whether he was being singled out. By the time he sold in September 2024, fines had accumulated to $3,277.61, which he was required to pay as a condition of closing.
The records Plaintiff primarily wanted — information about how the association treated other unit owners — are expressly excluded from the production obligation under the records statute. Plaintiff testified at deposition that his purpose was to determine whether he was being treated differently than other homeowners. Records about other owners' violations and personal information are exactly the category the law says do not have to be produced. As to the records Plaintiff was entitled to: the successor management company produced extensive records in August and September 2024 — including 10 years of reserve studies, summary financials, a 218-page violation report, and the resale package for Plaintiff's specific property. The Nevada Real Estate Division investigated and determined that any issues had been addressed and resolved. On causation: the $3,277.61 in fines flowed from a patio item Plaintiff could have removed. A missing disclosure form did not cause a sunshade fine.
The records Plaintiff needed were the association's violation and enforcement logs — records of the HOA's own practices, not personal financial data about individual owners. A log showing which properties received citations is a record of the association's conduct, not a record "relating to" any specific owner's personal affairs. This distinction matters: the court has already issued an order compelling production of the unredacted violation log. That order would have had no legal basis if the log were simply excluded by the records statute.
On the NRED investigation: the Nevada Real Estate Division substantiated Plaintiff's complaint that the association violated the records statute by not permitting access to records. The Division determined that the matter had been resolved — but it made that determination without ever contacting Plaintiff. An administrative finding that a violation was resolved is not a finding that no violation occurred. It is not binding on this court and does not extinguish Plaintiff's civil claim. The original violation — NEVCM's complete failure to respond to the August 2023 records request — was never cured by Prestige's 2024 production.
The NRED is the state agency specifically tasked with investigating and enforcing NRS Chapter 116. It conducted an investigation, gathered documents, and closed the matter. If the state agency charged with enforcing this statute found no ongoing violation, that is highly relevant context for whether Plaintiff was actually harmed by any alleged records failure. Plaintiff chose not to follow up with NRED after filing his complaint and cannot now rely on the investigation's incompleteness to inflate a resolved administrative matter into a civil damages claim.
Beyond compensating Plaintiff for his losses, he is also asking for punitive damages — money intended to punish wrongful conduct and deter others from doing the same thing in the future.
Defendants' conduct reflects a conscious disregard for Plaintiff's rights. They knew about active litigation. They were legally required to disclose it. They had their own written procedures claiming to ensure accuracy. And still, 48 consecutive times over 18 months, the same false statement went out. When a sitting board member tried to obtain litigation documents from the organization, he was turned away as if the information were "some secret." This is not an accident. This is a deliberate institutional practice carried out with knowledge of the probable harm to buyers who would rely on those disclosures.
Punitive damages require the highest standard of proof in civil law — clear and convincing evidence of intentional misconduct, oppression, or malice. An administrative failure — even a repeated one — does not meet that standard. There is no evidence anyone at Crestwood HOA or Apex Management made a conscious decision to harm buyers. There is no evidence of ill will toward Plaintiff specifically. Beyond the evidentiary problem, Defendants have also filed a separate motion arguing that under Nevada law, punitive damages cannot be awarded against a nonprofit organization like a homeowners' association, nor against its agent community managers. If that motion is granted, the punitive damages question will not even reach the jury.
Before we get to the specific legal questions, we want to know your overall gut reaction after hearing both sides present their evidence. There is no right answer.
Before answering the jury questions, you need to understand the two different standards of proof that apply in this case. The law requires different amounts of proof depending on the type of claim.
This means "more likely than not" — think of it as 51% vs. 49%. If the evidence tips even slightly in favor of one side, that side wins on that point.
This is the standard for most questions in this case — including whether a law was violated and whether it caused harm.
Applies to: Negligence, Negligence Per Se, Causation, DamagesThis is a higher bar. The evidence must be strong enough to make it highly probable — not just more likely — that the claim is true. Think of it as being firmly convinced, not just slightly persuaded.
This higher standard applies to fraud claims and to punitive damages, because those involve more serious findings.
Applies to: Intentional Misrepresentation, Constructive Fraud, Punitive DamagesIn plain terms: For fraud claims, you need to be firmly convinced — not just think it's slightly more probable. For questions about whether a law was broken and whether Plaintiff was harmed, the "more likely than not" standard applies. You'll see reminders of which standard applies as you answer each question.
Answer each question as you would if you were a juror. Answer based on the evidence you heard — not on what you think the "right" legal answer should be. You can scroll back to review the evidence at any time.
Based on your answers to the jury questions, here is what your verdict would be on each claim. The logic follows the same rules a judge would give a real jury.
Take a moment to review your findings. Then share any additional thoughts.
We deliberately withheld certain facts from the presentation to test how people responded without them. Now we're revealing them. We want to know whether they would change your conclusions.
Plaintiff is a licensed attorney. He attended law school, passed the bar exam, and is licensed to practice law — though not in Nevada. He was aware that he could search public court records before buying a home, and did not do so prior to closing.
Does knowing that Plaintiff is a licensed attorney (barred in another state, but not Nevada) change your assessment of whether he justifiably relied on the disclosure — or whether he had a professional duty to independently verify?
After Plaintiff purchased the property, a second lawsuit was filed against the HOA — called the Ventura case — on May 9, 2023. Defendants were served the following day. The board minutes from May 11, 2023 — the very next day after being served — recorded simply: "No legal to report." This second lawsuit was also omitted from every subsequent resale package through the end of 2023. It was the same omission — on a brand-new, freshly served lawsuit — immediately repeated.
Does the fact that Defendants omitted a second lawsuit from disclosures — immediately after being served with it — change your assessment of whether the pattern of non-disclosure was accidental or deliberate?
Your responses have been recorded. Your participation helps evaluate how ordinary people understand and respond to civil legal evidence.
This was a real civil case currently pending in Nevada. Your reactions and reasoning are genuinely valuable to this research. All responses remain anonymous.