An Orange Beach condo association sued the city under the Open Meetings Act — not the Condominium Act
An Orange Beach condo association sued the city under the Open Meetings Act — not the Condominium Act
2026-09-10 · Alabama · Compliance
When a Gulf-front condominium association objected to what its city council had done with the land next door, it did not reach for the Condominium Act. It reached for Alabama's government-transparency statute — and that choice is the transferable part of this story.
The settlement
At a special-called meeting on November 21, 2025, the Orange Beach City Council voted unanimously to settle a 2020 lawsuit brought by Larry Wireman of Turquoise Properties.1
Wireman had transferred two Perdido Beach Boulevard tracts to the city as a Turquoise Place development fee, subject to use restrictions, and sued when he said the city had not honoured them. Under the settlement the city relinquished ownership of the roughly one-acre “Gulf Tract” and the roughly 5.7-acre “Cotton Bayou Tract” — keeping permanent pedestrian and vehicular access on the Gulf Tract for municipal services — took three Canal Road tracts owned by Cayman Grill in exchange, and paid Wireman $500,000. The agreement notes it was the third settlement attempt.
The association's claim
On December 12, 2025, the Turquoise Place Condominium Association sued the City of Orange Beach, its council members and its mayor, alleging that the November 21 special meeting violated the Alabama Open Meetings Act, Ala. Code § 36-25A-1 et seq.2
The Act requires notice posted at city hall no less than 24 hours before a meeting. The association alleged the meeting “was posted online five minutes before it was scheduled to begin.”
The city's position, per its clerk Renee Eberly, was that notice had been posted on November 19; she emailed media at 9:30 a.m. on November 21 saying so.
The association asked the court to invalidate the actions taken at the November 21 meeting and to impose a civil penalty on the city and the council members — remedies the Act supplies, on its expedited track of a seven-day response and a hearing within 10 to 17 business days.
How it ended
On February 4, 2026, the city and the association filed a joint motion to dismiss.3
The city's statement said the parties “discussed the claims raised in the complaint and the remedies sought, as well as the actions taken by city staff in compliance with the Alabama Open Meetings Act and thereafter agreed to file a joint motion to dismiss.”
A joint dismissal is not an adjudication. No court ruled on whether the notice complied with the Act, and the settlement the association challenged stands.
Why the choice of statute is the story
An association's ordinary toolkit runs inward. The Alabama Uniform Condominium Act of 1991 and the declaration govern the association's relationship with its own unit owners, its board and its common elements. Section 35-8A-302(a)(4) lets an association institute, defend or intervene in litigation on behalf of two or more unit owners on matters affecting the condominium — but that is a standing provision, not a source of rights against a municipality.
What an association actually needs when a city's decision affects the parcel next door is a claim against the city. Zoning appeals are one route and are usually confined to the specific decision, with tight deadlines and standing requirements. The Open Meetings Act is another, and it has three features that make it attractive:
The violation is procedural. The claim is about how the decision was made, not whether it was correct. An association does not have to persuade a court that a land swap was a bad deal — only that the notice was late.
The remedy reaches the decision itself. The Act allows a court to invalidate action taken at a non-compliant meeting, and to impose civil penalties on the body and its members.
The track is fast. A seven-day response and a hearing inside 10 to 17 business days is quicker than almost anything else an association could file, which matters when the decision it is challenging is already being implemented.
What it changes for boards and managers
For coastal associations in particular, the practical lesson is about watching, not litigating.
Special-called meetings are where the exposure sits. A regularly scheduled council meeting is on a published calendar. A special-called meeting to approve a settlement is not, and the 24-hour posting requirement is the only thing standing between it and a decision nobody outside the room saw coming. An association whose interests turn on municipal land decisions should be monitoring special-meeting notices, not just agendas.
Document the timestamp. The entire dispute here is about when a notice appeared. That is an evidentiary question about a webpage, and it is recoverable only if somebody captures it contemporaneously.
Understand what a joint dismissal buys. Ending on a joint motion produced no ruling and no penalty, and left the underlying transaction intact. Where the goal is to undo a decision rather than to be heard about it, the Act's invalidation remedy has to be pressed to a hearing.
The wider Orange Beach context
Two further threads make this less of a one-off.
Larry Wireman, the plaintiff in the settled 2020 case, is also president of the board of the Caribe Resort Condominium Association — the defendant in Ex parte Caribe Resort Condominium Association Board of Directors (Ala. Dec. 13, 2024), the decision holding that members of an Alabama nonprofit corporation have no general right to bring a derivative action. Orange Beach condominium governance and Orange Beach municipal land decisions are being litigated by an overlapping cast.
And the city is in the middle of a development freeze that shapes what new associations get created there at all. Orange Beach imposed a residential moratorium in March 2025 covering projects of three or more housing units and subdivisions of three or more residential lots under 9,000 square feet, plus a wetlands moratorium in May 2025 barring development within 15 feet of any wetlands. In August 2026 the council took up extending both through June 30, 2027, with a public hearing and first reading set for September 1, 2026 alongside adoption of the city's Comprehensive Plan.4 We could not confirm a final adoption vote.
What we could not verify
We did not obtain the docket. The case number is unconfirmed, and we have not read the complaint, the joint motion, or any order. The statute is real and correctly characterised in the reporting; the procedural history above rests on the outlet's account.
What to watch next
The September 1, 2026 first reading on the moratorium extensions is the next dated municipal step, and whether the extension passed will determine whether Orange Beach's development pause runs into mid-2027.
For associations elsewhere in Alabama, the thing to watch is whether the tactic spreads. An Open Meetings Act claim is available to any association affected by a municipal decision taken without proper notice, and nothing about it is specific to the coast.
Related Alabama HOA Topics
- Orange Beach settles five-year lawsuit with land swap, $500,000 — Gulf Coast Media, Dec. 2, 2025 ↩
- Orange Beach faces lawsuit alleging previous settlement meeting did not follow public notice laws — Gulf Coast Media, Dec. 24, 2025 ↩
- Orange Beach, Turquoise Place file to dismiss lawsuit — Gulf Coast Media, Feb. 4, 2026 ↩
- Orange Beach may extend building moratoriums as comp plan development continues — Gulf Coast Media, Aug. 17, 2026 ↩
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