For novices, which is a fair description of the entire board, regardless of prior service elsewhere, this sounded scary. Because, the follow-up question to this is – OK, what happens if we violate our fiduciary duty?
The vague answer: lawsuits. And, nobody wants lawsuits, right?
With such a loose framework, the haunting shadow of the Fiduciary Duty Boogieman meant that anyone who suggested something different was often confronted with the concept that inaction, or inconsistency in action, would result in some hypothetical owner in our community filing a lawsuit against the board, or individual board members for violating “fiduciary duty”. Therefore, Walker, and his ideological partner, Irve, would repeatedly browbeat their fellow boardmembers on this point. No one wanted to be the one who attracted a lawsuit. And, so we went along with their theory of “duty” for most of 2018.