What the politicians didn't do, the courts might.

Condo owners fined small amounts for late maintenance payments can end up owing thousands to association attorneys who tack on their own fees and then seek foreclosure if they are not paid.

An attempt by a state House committee in March to rein in such practices failed to win approval.

But owners are striking back, filing lawsuits challenging their associations and the attorneys who represent them. At least two federal court cases allege the attorneys are violating the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Florida Consumer Collections Practices Act. In both cases, the judges have sided with the condo owners.

The attorneys argue they aren't required to obey the federal law because it only regulates debt collectors. Condo maintenance and assessments aren't debts, they argue.

The issue involves more than 1.1 million condo owners in Florida and, indirectly, millions of homeowners in mandatory association and deed-restricted communities.

Ramsey Agan, a retired mortgage banker, and his wife, Grace, own an apartment in the Plaza East in Fort Lauderdale. In 1999, the board assessed each owner thousands of dollars for concrete balcony replacement, which the Agans paid, according to their attorney, F. Blane Carneal of Fort Lauderdale.

In 2000, the association president told Agan he still owed $286. Agan denied it and demanded to see the association's records, which he was never shown. Still, Agan said, the president admitted he owed nothing.

Yet on Dec. 4, 2002, a lien was placed on his apartment for $1,001.01, all for attorney's fees owed the law firm of Katzman & Korr of Lauderhill.

The Agans on Dec. 2 asked U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas to rule that the attorneys' lien violates the law. They sought an order for an end to such practices and asked that the law firm pay unspecified damages and costs.

On March 16, they won their first victory when Dimitrouleas ruled the law firm can be considered debt collectors and therefore the law applies to them.

The Agans want the case to be declared a class-action so it would apply to similar owners.

That would please Donna Murray, a single mother of four who owns a unit in a Tamarac complex. Unable to pay all her bills on time, she says she was making her $225 monthly maintenance payments on the 11th, even though payment is due on the 10th of the month. Rather than give her a break, the association regularly adds a $25 late fee to her bill.

She recently received a notice asking for $3,007, which includes about $600 in late fees, attorneys' fees and, as she understand it, advance maintenance payments. She isn't indebted for any past maintenance because she always paid, she said.

"If I don't pay the whole thing now, they'll auction off my home, so I plan to get a lawyer and refinance because I don't want to lose my property," she said.

Jan Bergemann of St. Augustine, founder and president of Cyber Citizens for Justice, said he gets calls a couple of times a week from owners whose one-time forgetfulness or even lack of notice about a debt resulted in foreclosure.

"Many of the victims we talk to are people who would gladly pay if they had known that they owed," Bergemann said. "They aren't the deadbeats."

He added, "Debt collection is a cash cow for these lawyers."

Gary Poliakoff, whose firm Becker & Poliakoff represents thousands of associations statewide, said anything that hurts the ability to aggressively collect would force honest owners to make up the money scofflaws don't pay.

The lawn and pool maintenance companies must be paid, he said, just as the insurance bill can't be ignored.

Becker & Poliakoff was sued for violating debt-collection laws last year after it sent out letters claiming that more than 150 owners owed past-due maintenance.

The case was settled after U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich in Tampa ruled in favor of the unit owners, saying "lawyers who regularly try to obtain payment of consumer debts through legal proceedings" are debt collectors and Becker & Poliakoff's own literature lists "collection and foreclosure" as one of its specialties.

State legislators got involved in the dispute when the House Select Committee on Condominium Governance last year heard owners tell "horror stories" about their dealing with their boards.

House committee chairman Rep. Julio Robaina, R-Miami, said he wasn't trying to protect deadbeats, only the honest owner who simply forgets to pay for a day or a week, never received a coupon book or needs some extra time.

The law Robaina tried to repeal was adopted in the early 1990s to protect condo associations by making it easier for attorneys to go after scofflaws. Attorneys earn their fee only when they collect the debt, so all owners benefit when attorneys get the money, Poliakoff said.

But Carneal points out this is the only law to give attorneys their money before the clients get theirs.

Robaina's committee wanted the association to get its money first. Its proposals would have restricted attorneys from filing liens on anything except the money owed the association. Now the attorney can foreclose for late fees, attorney's fees and costs and interest.

Robaina said he dropped the proposals from the committee's condo reform bill last month, sacrificing them in order to save its other provisions, including an ombudsman to resolve disputes between owners and boards.

The fate of the reform proposals will be known by the end of this week.

Not all unit owners think aggressively pursuing debts is a bad thing.

"If someone cannot afford the maintenance fees and/or the assessments from time to time of a condominium association or homeowner association, then they should not move into a neighborhood with these association fees," said Margaret Gatto of Weston. "A good many of our beautiful neighborhoods have been destroyed by the very people who do not want to pay their association fees."