Construction: may vs shall Context:a Florida HOA bylaws indicate: The passage below indicates may: Special meetings of the Board may be called by the president on five(5)days notice to each Director either personally or by mail , facsimile transmission or electronic mail. Special meetings shall be called by the president or secretary in a like manner and on like notice on the written request of three (3) Directors. A subsequent passage below indicates shall: Meetings ofthe Board of Administration shall be open to all unit owners. Notice of all meetings shall be posted on the official bulletin board ofthe Association at least forty-eight (48) hours in advance of each scheduled meeting and directed to the attention of all unit owners. In case of an emergency, a meeting of the Board of Administration may be held without notice. Assume that a meeting minutes are provided as evidence. It would seem that the language using may is a permissive and not a requirement. Assume a 'corner case': a meeting is scheduled on the 1st for the 4th of a given month. Is there any case law or any other reasoning process that wherein may nullifies such a meeting and effectively sets a requirement? Assume that meeting is posted with 48 hours notice so that only the shall / may language is the focus of any answer to the question.
Shall Whenever a law or legal text uses shall there is no discretion allowed. Read it as has to when it prescribes something. If it is written in the negative (shall not), you can read it as it is forbidden or X is barred. [the] Congress of the United States [...] shall consist of a Senate and House of Representative This prescribes that the congress has to have these two parts, not more, not less. Special meetings shall be called by the president or secretary in a like manner and on like notice on the written request of three (3) Directors. Whenever 3 directors sign letters demanding a meeting, then the president or secretary has to follow the process explained before. Congress shall make no law [that does X] Note that this is a negative shall! Read it as Congress is barred from doing a law that does X. Shall obviously can have exceptions or modifiers. Such often are in modifying sentences following them. Meetings of the Board of Administration shall be open to all unit owners. Notice of all meetings shall be posted on the official bulletin board ofthe Association at least forty-eight (48) hours in advance of each scheduled meeting and directed to the attention of all unit owners. In case of an emergency, a meeting of the Board of Administration may be held without notice. There has to be a notice on the board at least 48 hours before a meeting, unless there is an emergency. May Legal texts usually use may whenever there is an option to do something. It usually marks the possibility to do something and vesting the discretion to do so in somebody. Often, they come with a minimum or maximum time an event has to occur from a deadline. The department may enter an order doing one or more of the following if the department finds that a person has violated or is operating in violation of any of the provisions of this section or the orders issued under this section: The decision if something happens is vested in the department [of Agriculture and Consumer Services]. If they decide to act, then it has to come from the list that follows the section. Special meetings of the Board may be called by the president on five(5)days notice to each Director [...] It is at the discretion of the president to call a special meeting. If they do, it has to be done with 5 (or more) days warning to the Directors. Including the other paragraph of OPs document, then it also has to be posted 48 hours before the meeting on the board, unless it is emergency.
Can the HOA compel payment? Yes, at least from the standpoint of unjust enrichment or quantum meruit. That is because the resident obtains some benefit(s) from the HOA's activity &amp; expenses, such as the maintenance of common areas and other items that advance the common good of the community. However, a drastic or arbitrary increase in invoices might not be enforceable, especially if these are unreasonable. The HOA would need to persuade in court that the resident accepted or would have knowingly and willfully accepted such drastic change. HOA bylaws: Are they enforceable absent a contract? If by bylaws you mean something other than bills, the question would depend on the substance &amp; scope of those bylaws as well as the HOA's/resident's jurisdiction. It is noteworthy that a written &amp; signed contract is oftentimes unnecessary. There is the notion of "implicit contract" to refer to rights and duties that can be inferred from the parties' conduct and the expectations that can be inferred therefrom. This notion of implicit contract is common in situations where there is no written document that reflects the parties' intent in the relation they willfully enter.
I am not knowledgeable about UK law, but since almost everywhere in the U.S. employment is at-will by default, in all three scenarios Company B is entitled to terminate the employee very easily. The assumption that the employee was accurately found guilty of harassment elsewhere precludes more interesting analyses where matters such as defamation and public policy are involved. If the contract between the employee and Company B establishes that termination will be for good cause, the employee has only a mild chance of not being terminated for what he did in Company A. However, I say "mild chance" because in most cases Company B can reasonably argue that it seeks to protect its other employees and/or customers from the possibility that the employee's misconduct may occur in the current workplace. A very detailed analysis of the factual circumstances might be required for discerning whether Company B's decision to terminate the employee is merited. Additionally, in cases where The Employee is a publicly visible figure and a figure of authority having a management role there could be a concern that the employee's misconduct elsewhere may harm the image of Company B.
If I read this correctly, (and more context would support this, but I don't have time to do research at the moment; I also don't have the book in question, so I'm only basing off of the provided snippet) then it appears two different (higher court) justices making rules, not only to guide their own judgements before them, but for reference for lower court justices to base their rulings against. Note that these two cases appear to have taken place about 3 decades apart, and in two different countries, albeit with related legal codes. The Purple is "identical" to the Green, because their wording is near enough identical between the two passages. I don't think "dumbness" or lack of distinguishably is implied. Rather McRae's rule is Conditions Green AND (logical "and") Condition Red, while the British rule is just Condition Green. The orange text suggests that, under the rule in Associated Japanese Bank Ltd v Credit du Nord SA, Condition Red need NOT be shown. I.e., you don't need to show that a party is responsible for convincing the other party of an unreasonable falsehood, to prevent the first party from using the doctrine of "common mistake". It also suggests that the rule from McRae does impose Condition Red. Essentially, the text is describing two different (non-exhaustive) tests for determining when the doctrine of "common mistake" can be invoked.
First, to be clear, this is almost never a state level limitation. To the extent that the link in the question implies otherwise, it is incorrect. Instead, local governments, typically a municipality or in an area that is not part of any municipality, a county, enacts land use regulations, the most common of which is usually called a &quot;zoning code.&quot; There are also usually locally adopted building codes that supplement the zoning code. A zoning code typically establishes rules regarding how different kinds of real estate can be used in different enumerated zones. Usually, there are several different zones in which residential uses are allowed and different rules apply in each one. One of the typical limitations in a residential zone is to establish the number of unrelated people who don't own the home who may live there. The purpose of such limitations is to discourage the establishment of boarding houses, group homes, women's shelters, homeless shelters, flop houses, and halfway houses in relatively low density residential zones, on the theory that these uses are undesirable in terms of neighborhood character and cause undesirable people to move into a neighborhood that lowers property values for other people who live there. More crassly, people in affluent neighborhoods want to ban property uses that make it possible for poorer people to live near them. Often the actual scope of the limitations, however, is far broader than is necessary to prohibit these particularly unpopular &quot;NIMBY&quot; (not in my backyard) uses. The drafters of zoning codes are frequently more concerned about preventing loopholes in their restrictions from being identified than about limiting property rights in a respect that most current property owners in the zone don't avail themselves of anyway. For example, in Denver, where I live, the City Council recently passed a Group Living Amendment to its zoning code easing restrictions on uses of residences by unrelated people. This measure was sufficiently controversial that members of the public used their referral powers to petition to have the repeal of the recently enacted legislation places on the November 2021 general election ballot for voters to consider repealing it. As the link in the question notes, homeowner's associations, frequently also impose limitations on this kind of use of a residence, which are often even more strict, and are frequently adopted for the same reason. HOAs have more authority to do so than local governments because as private entities, they aren't required to meet constitutional law limitations on their authority. The question is, if both parties agree to forgo any safety measures that it might be there to protect, who exactly is it hurting if one person pays the other to stay over? In simple terms: why is it illegal? Why does the government care who stays in who's house, while paying money? Is there some 3rd party that is negatively affected if the guidelines aren't followed? The third-party is the neighboring property owners who fear that the quality of their neighborhood will be reduced by this kind of agreement. I am sympathetic to these criticisms. But, they aren't barriers to enacting laws if people with the power to enact legislation disagree. The simple rule is that in the real world, legislation is not required to adhere to a liberal/libertarian ideal in which laws are enacted only to regulate matters in which someone else may arguably be harmed. Subject to light constitutional regulation, the authority of local government's to enact legislation regulating the use of property is frequently plenary (i.e. unlimited) or close to it. The government can do anything it wants that it isn't forbidden from doing by the constitution or a higher level government's statutes. Courts aren't permitted to second guess the accuracy or desirability of these legislative determinations in most cases. Many states, furthermore, have &quot;home rule cities&quot; that are expressly protected from having their legislative authority limited in many respects by state legislation. A regulatory taking, the prevents property from having any beneficial use, must be compensated by the government enacting the regulation of its use. But regulatory laws may reduce the value of property by limiting the uses to which it can be put so long as there is still some beneficial use of the property that remains available. A very light and disputed impact that is perceived to be negative, such as the one in this case, is a sufficient rational basis for a municipal or local government to enact such legislation, and many local government zoning codes do, in fact, regulate this kind of activity. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the authority of local governments to enact this kind of legislation in the United States in the face of a constitutional challenge to it, in the case of Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. in 1926, although some more extreme versions of limitations on non-related people sharing a home have subsequently been held to be invalid, mostly as a result of later enacted federal fair housing laws.
There are two issues. First, can the HOA deny access to its facilities and common areas for an unpaid HOA assessment. There might be exceptions in particular jurisdictions, but the general rule would be that it is not unlawful to deny someone who isn't current on their dues use of facilities and common areas. Second, do you have an unpaid HOA bill? This is obviously a factual question. The HOA takes the position that you do and is acting accordingly. You could sue the HOA for a determination that your bill is paid in full, or could try to work with the HOA treasurer to determine why the amount that you believe is owed differs from the amount that they believe is owed. I've seen cases where the HOA failed to credit payments that were made or miscalculated the amount due, and I've seen cases where, for example, the homeowner has paid the principle, but not additional amounts owed for late fees, interest and attorneys' fees incurred in collecting the balance that are also owed.
As a linguist who reads laws for a hobby, I would say that "and" legally means what it was intended to mean. There are often interpretive statutes which say that "and" can be read as "or" or vice versa, when necessary (as in ORC 1.02 "And" may be read "or," and "or" may be read "and" if the sense requires it. Delaware doesn't have that as a rule, but it is a rule employed by courts "as required". One approach to interpretation is to discern intent from surrounding text, so we would look at the whole code. The general context is the rule that "A building or land shall be used only for the following purposes". Following Article XXVII of the code, other uses could be permitted because "§115-32. Special use exceptions may be permitted by the Board of Adjustment and in accordance with the provisions of Article XXVII of this chapter and may include...". That section ends with "C:Other special use exceptions as follows", and includes "Private garages for more than four automobiles and with floor area of more than 900 square feet in a residential district". From the list of things enumerated in §115-32, there is no coherent pattern – some things are in the list of special exceptions, some things are in this list, some not. So the "surrounding text" approach doesn't help in this case. Scrutiny of legislative debate is sometimes invoked, especially at the federal level, but there is negligible chance that there is any such evidence here. The almost-final approach is to spell out the competing interpretations, and see if anything jumps out as ridiculous (because it is assumed that lawmakers do not pass ridiculous laws). The two interpretations are "both must be true", versus "one must be true". Since the general rule is that you can go ahead unless it is restricted, then with the "both" interpretation, you need a special exception permit if you simultaneously plan to have more than 4 automobiles (which means, 5+, so 4 is allowed) and floor area greater than 900 sf. Thus if you plan for only 4 cars, or can fit the 5 cars into 900 sf, then you would not require a permit (on the "both" interpretation). Which btw is the literal interpretation of "and". This is not an absurd scenario (using a generous 10'x18' space, which I derived from parking slot regulations in Danbury CT). So it is reasonable to think they meant "both". The "either of these" interpretation says that they are being even more restrictive – you need permission to have a 5+ car garage (regardless of size), and you need permission to have a garage larger than 800 sf (even if there were only 1 car in it). This seems a bit specific since there isn't generally a size restriction on structures in the code – except that playhouses are limited to 150 sf. and can't be tall enough for an adult to stand up. Since the literal meaning of "and" is "both at once", and since no facts about the code say otherwise (i.e. that interpretation does not result in an absurd nullification of some other provision), an objective court should interpret this rule to mean "both at once", thus the government imposes the fewest restrictions on your property. No way to know what they will do.
Usually a Supreme Court opnion has a single author, although often multiple Justices &quot;sign&quot; or &quot;join&quot; the opinion, meaning that those Justices agree with both the reasoning and the result. It is very common for ma Justice who is not the author to suggest specific wording for an opnion, anywhere from a single word to several paragrahs or even pages of writing. Such suggestions are not usually formally credited. However, in some cases an opinion is drafted by a committee of justices, with each taking one or more sections of the opinion. This may be done to speed up the drafting, or to make sure that the opinion will be acceptable to a wider ranger of the Justices, or for other reasons. The book The Brethren by Woodward and Armstrong describes several occasions when the Burger court used committee opinions, usually drafted by three Justices.