When it is just too late to put new item on agenda?

Q. IN an earlier column you explained that the Horizontal Law gives property owners the right to request that items be placed on the official agenda of the forthcoming AGM of the Community of Property Owners.  This I did by email and confirmed by letter the following day.  The request was made over four weeks before the meeting.  My items did not appear on the agenda and I was told that the agenda had already been compiled and my items arrived too late.  The agenda was published and distributed three weeks before the meeting so they had a week to fit my items in.  I can find no reference in the Horizontal Law to a time limit. Perhaps you could comment.

R.P. Costa del Sol

A. YES, Article 16 of the Law of Horizontal Property says that any owner may request that items be placed on the Agenda for the Annual General Meeting.  It states clearly that the President shall place such items on the Agenda when requested.  There is no time limit specified.  The only time limit mentioned is that the AGM must be convoked at least six days in advance.

So it seems that we have here a borderline case.  Perhaps the agenda had been carefully prepared and sent to the printer just before your letter arrived and perhaps it already contained a number of complex items, so the President decided to leave yours out for this time.  This is a defensible position.

Or perhaps the President preferred not to bring up the points you mention at this time, so he rushed the agenda into final form in order not to include them.  This would be an abuse of his powers.

In either case you have the right to go to Court to claim that you have been deprived of your right to place an item on the agenda.  Your letter was in proper form and seemed to be well in time.  However, the President can surely claim that it really was too late for last-minute changes.

Send your questions for David Searl through lawyers Ubeda-Retana and Associates in Fuengirola at Ask@lawtaxspain.com, or call 952 667 090.