Hoa In Chicago Is Sticking Us With An Insane Bill, Is This Legal? Can We Fight This?

Location: Chicago

We live in a garden unit condominium in Chicagoland. We own our unit but as stated have an HOA for the building. Well, this building is old and the plumbing was updated above the ground unit but now below it.

A couple months ago we were watching tv when we smelled something awful. We looked back and the toilet was SPEWING sewage. This was ik the middle of the night. We tried calling the property manager multiple times, no answer. We tried calling the buildings maintenance people, no answer. We tried calling the plumber they had listed as a contact on our HOA who didn’t answer.

We had to get this problem solved so we called an emergency plumber, at 2 AM because our house was filling with sewage water. He was the only guy we could find. Well he was there for most of the night because he had to cut INTO the walls to find the pipes that were connected and everything. He cleared out the community tanks and got it fixed. It ended up costing 3.4k but we were made to understand it was a building problem we just got the shit end because we were the garden unit. We found out that we were lucky we caught it because it would have backflowed into all apartments if we hadn’t been quick.

Now. The plumber stated this was a temporary fix, as the pipes below our unit have shifted and the floor needs to be ripped out and pipes replaced or it will happen again in time. We’ve already had another smaller incident that cost $800 to fix( this time with HOA plumber) but they are sticking us with both the bills.

Insurance denied our claim and HOA is denying responsibility. Is this legal? How can we fight this?