Record Preservation Checklist: Issuing and Running a Litigation Hold in a Florida Association

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Checklist
• Published September 26, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums · HOAs · Cooperatives

A litigation hold is the instruction that stops an association from destroying material it will need to defend itself. It is issued before the lawsuit, not after, and the association that waits for a complaint has usually already lost a month of camera footage. This checklist covers what triggers the duty, who has to be told, what actually needs preserving, and how to document it.

Preservation is a board obligation even though counsel drafts the notice. The board controls the vendors, the portal and the cameras, and the board is who a court looks at when material is missing. Use this alongside the litigation hold and record preservation page and the records retention checklist, which sets the periods this hold suspends.

Deciding the duty has been triggered

• Treat the duty to preserve as arising when litigation is reasonably anticipated, not when a complaint is served.
• Work through the common triggers and mark any that have occurred: a demand letter or notice of intent to sue; a demand for presuit mediation; a Division complaint; an arbitration petition; a construction defect notice of claim; a denied or disputed insurance claim; a serious injury on the property; a terminated contractor; a records request that reads like the opening move in a dispute.In an HOA, covenant enforcement, board and committee meeting disputes, amendment disputes and records access disputes all require a presuit mediation demand before suit. A demand arriving in the mail is notice that litigation is being prepared.§ 720.311(2)(a)
• Construction: a claimant must serve a written notice of claim at least 60 days before filing, or at least 120 days before filing where an association represents more than 20 parcels. The notice is a preservation trigger in both directions.§ 558.004(1)(a)
• Write down the date the duty was triggered and what triggered it.That date is what a court measures preservation against. Deciding it later, in hindsight, is not a position you want to argue from.
• Do not wait for counsel to be formally engaged before stopping deletion.Suspending an auto-delete rule costs nothing and unwinds cleanly. Losing a month of footage does not.

Issuing the hold notice

• Have counsel draft the notice, and send it in writing. Do not announce a hold orally at a meeting and consider it issued.
• Describe the subject matter plainly enough that a recipient can tell whether a document relates to it, and state the date range covered.
• List the categories and the media expressly, naming text messages, photographs, voicemail and video by name rather than saying "all documents".People preserve what the notice names. A notice that says "documents" will not save the group chat.
• State in terms that routine deletion, archiving, overwriting and scheduled destruction must stop for covered material.
• Require a written acknowledgment back from every recipient, and chase the ones who do not respond.
• Re-issue the hold at least every six months, and again whenever the board composition or the manager changes.A hold issued to a board that has since turned over is a hold nobody at the table has read.

Who receives the hold notice

• Every current director, individually, and every director who served during the covered period including those who have left the board.
• The community association manager by name, and the management company as an entity.Serving the company is not the same as serving the individual who keeps the working file on a personal drive.
• On-site staff: property manager, maintenance personnel, front desk and security.
• The engineer, architect or inspector who worked on the matter, and any contractor or subcontractor whose work is at issue.
• The insurance carrier and broker, and the public adjuster if there is a claim.
• The accountant, bookkeeper and reserve study provider where money or reserves are at issue.
• The website, portal or camera vendor, where the association cannot stop deletion on the platform itself.

Suspending auto-delete and routine destruction

• Suspend the retention schedule for every covered category.A retention period is a floor below which you may not destroy. It is never authority to destroy while a hold is in place.
• Turn off auto-delete, auto-archive and retention policies on association e-mail accounts, and confirm the change with the provider.
• Turn off automatic overwrite on security camera, gate camera and doorbell systems, and export the relevant window before it rolls.Most systems overwrite in 14 to 30 days. This is the single most common preservation failure in association cases, and it is usually discovered two months too late.
• Suspend scheduled shredding with the vendor, in writing, and get written confirmation back.
• Freeze the management portal's purge cycle and confirm the vendor has actually done it rather than agreeing to.
• Suspend voicemail auto-deletion on the association line and on the manager's line, and preserve any device being replaced rather than trading it in.

The categories people forget

• Text messages and group chats among directors, including threads on personal phones.
• Personal e-mail accounts used for association business, including a spouse's account used for convenience.
• Photographs taken on personal phones by directors, managers and maintenance staff, collected from the device so the metadata survives.Sending a photograph by text or through a messaging app strips much of the metadata. The date the photograph was taken is often the fact in dispute.
• Drone footage and aerial imagery taken for a roof, seawall, balcony or building inspection.
• Voicemail messages on the association line, the manager's line and directors' phones.
• The manager's own working files, notes and calendar entries, which the management company may treat as its property.Read the management agreement before the hold goes out. If it does not say the association owns the manager's working file, that is a conversation to have now rather than during discovery.
• Handwritten meeting notes and the drafts of minutes that preceded the approved version.
• Work orders, vendor invoices, the maintenance log, and security and gate access logs.

Collecting and storing what you preserve

• Collect copies centrally. Do not ask recipients to decide for themselves what is relevant and send you the rest.
• Preserve e-mail in a format that keeps headers, threading and attachments intact, not as printouts or forwarded messages.
• Where the matter is serious, image the device rather than copying files off it.
• Store collected material in one location the association controls, separate from working files, with write access restricted to named people.
• Log the chain of custody for anything physical, including a failed component, a core sample or a section of pipe pulled from the building.In a construction case the physical evidence is often the case. Throwing away the failed fitting ends the claim.

Documenting compliance

• Keep the hold notice, the distribution list and every signed acknowledgment together in one file.
• Keep a log of what was suspended, on what date, by whom, and the vendor confirmation for each.
• Record in the board minutes that a hold was issued and is in effect, without reciting its privileged contents.The fact of the hold is a board action worth recording. The legal analysis inside it is privileged and does not belong in minutes owners can read.
• Note in the file every gap you find and what caused it.A gap you found, documented and disclosed is a very different thing from a gap the other side discovers.

Lifting the hold

• Lift the hold only on counsel's written instruction.
• Confirm the matter is fully concluded, including appeal periods, related claims and any indemnity or subrogation claim still open.
• Send a written release to everyone who received the hold, using the same distribution list.
• Resume the retention schedule, document the date it resumed, and calendar the first destruction cycle after that date.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes issues and manages litigation holds for Southwest Florida associations, advises boards on what must be preserved once a dispute is anticipated, and defends associations where records have gone missing. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Litigation & ADR page.