Are Exculpatory Clauses Enforceable?
Community association boards and managers often ask their lawyers to create a document which will protect them if owners or other users of the association’s facilities are injured. The communities often intend to require users of the facilities to sign these documents as a condition of allowing them to use the facilities in the hope of minimizing the association’s exposure to liability. Many times, there are issues of whether owners and others have legal rights to use the facilities which preclude the association imposing such conditions, but, for purposes of this article, let us assume we get past those issues so we may consider whether such agreements are enforceable at all.