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.
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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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