Oh come on dragonchild and rir, you must be kidding when you say

Nanette is merely exercising her rights as a denizen of the United States. She has the right to expect a decent living situation and the right to sue when she is thwarted in that expectation.

and

he suggests that she spend the association's money, indirectly her money, to get council on a suit that a loudmouth hasn't even filed. What was he thinking Nanette is going to get for a judgement? for loud pipes? What did he think Nanette was going claim Sayuko did to wrong her? Conspire with upstairs neighbors to put loud water into the drain pipe?

I have seen court cases started for more frivolous reasons than that!

The neighbour from hell has no reason at all to claim against the condominium: she bought the apartment from the previous owner and should complain there, but he probably has an iron-clad contract and she's out-of-luck there, so it is easy to target your friendly board members.

We live in a society of individuals who cannot even consider the meaning of a community. Fortunately there are still some people who --against all advice to the contrary-- will take the heavy burden of supporting a community, be it as the President of a condominium board or as a volunteer in a charity or in any other community function. None or few of them are saints, most are ordinary people but they will face whatever is thrown at them and they will not duck but stand firm.

You both should be ashamed that you even dare to suggest that Sayuko should go the way of the least resistance and bail out of the board. Will it end her trouble? Not at all as she still lives in the condominium and the problems will not disappear if she leaves her post.

Sayuko clearly has taken the very moral position that someone has to do something about it and that running away is not an option, nor is dropping it in someone else's lap.

To give you a personal example: when I was a lawyer, people regularly asked me how I could bring myself to defend criminals even in cases where it was clear (to the uninformed mobs, I might add) that this criminal was guilty.

I always answered that even the worst criminal has a right to be defended in court by a professional lawyer and that by not taking such case out of moral considerations, I would simply burden another lawyer with the same moral problems I so conveniently avoided by not taking the case. I find such an attitude most immoral.

Sayuko has my best wishes and strength I can project to her. It is not much, I know, but perhaps she can take some little comfort in the idea that community feeling is not dead yet.

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