Just wanted to mention why the house is haunted, legally, for those who were fortunate enough to avoid law school.
There is a concept known as equitable estoppel. It prevents a party from making claims that are contrary to other public claims that they have made (note that is the really, really, simplified version). In essense, it’s a thou shalt not contradict thyself kind of rule.
The Defendant in this case claimed, publicly and repeatedly, that the house was haunted.
They were therefore estopped from claiming that the house was not haunted in court.
Thus, when the plaintiff claims that the house is haunted, or known to be haunted, and that the defendant never told them beforehand, the defendant is unable to debate that claim. Therefore, as a matter of law, the house is haunted becuase one party has claimed as such and the other party does not debate it.
But you’re talking about a judgment of the government or a legal authority, not delusions made up by the homeowner and idiots. It’s at least possible the site is polluted, despite the claims of the homeowner. Whereas neither the homeowner nor anyone else is going to be able to produce a ghost.
Why is the neighbour in a thong not as much of a big deal? Who decided where that line was drawn, exactly? The Court? Well, the Court’s logic (to the extent it exists) is that there was a potential negative impact on the property value, yes? So I gave other examples of potential negative impacts to the property value - why aren’t those all the same? And if the house was so “famous” as a haunted house, how did the buyer, the buyer’s realtor/agent, and all the friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances of the buyer somehow not know about it? The home inspector never mentioned it either? And when the buyers went and talked to the neighbours before buying, no one told them? Where were the “hundreds of people” stopping by then? (Good grief, it sounds like a chapter from A Tale of Two Cities.)
If the house was as famous and popular as one would have us believe, then obviously the buyers didn’t use due diligence in investigating it…so why are they being rewarded? In our rush in America to banish caveat emptor to the days of 5-cent Burma Shaves, I fear we as a Society have lost our sanity.
Further, up above you implied strongly that even being a curmudgeon would entail a mandatory warning. What about that? Is it or is it not your assertion that just being a curmudgeon would mandate legally a seller’s disclosure?
I can’t even believe this is debatable. The Court should have thrown the plaintiffs out of court and sanctioned them and their attorney for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
I’m curious about this statement. Are these actual spooky things that you have observed in your house, investigated, and been unable to explain? Or are you speaking hypothetically (in which case, why would you suppose that these things occur at all, given your lack of belief in ghosts)?
This is more viewpoint justified than legally justified. The application of a libertarian or conservative viewpoint to the issue of seller disclosure might result in less of a requirement to report things, but any law or policy is susceptible to such an approach, and such criticisms are better suited for GD or like forums.
From a legal standpoint, it’s entirely plausible one could make a case that a buyer should have disclosed that the previous occupant of the house was of such character as to attract vandals or criminal activity. The law doesn’t say “Seller must warn of W, X, Y, and Z”. The law generally requires reasonable disclosures. Reasonable obvious varies with the circumstances. Lawsuits happen when two parties seem to disagree about what is reasonable.
Admittedly, I only read the Wiki page, since I don’t have time to dig through all the original court transcripts. But we’re talking about general principles here anyhow. If you don’t want to contribute then don’t.
There are a lot of things you need to disclose, but since the house is absolutely not haunted, I don’t see why you’d have to disclose that.
I used to live in a house that was not haunted, but was very close to the site of an annual three-day street fair kind of thing. Real estate agent suggested I not try to sell it in the month of June. Good plan. The amount of disruption varied from year to year anyway, and soon after I sold it–maybe even the next year–the street fair moved to another venue.
ETA: The street fair was fun enough if you wanted to participate, be close, and have your kids make money selling lemonade on the front lawn. Not so fun if you wanted to park your car, or get your car out if already parked. The way I saw it, for the right person it could have been a selling point. Same with a haunted house!
Can any legal Doper find a place where the majority opinion referenced in that article could be read online? It sounds like a hoot, and I’m curious exactly how Ghostbusters was referenced.
The part that your missing, Una, is that the defendant was unable to argue that the house wasn’t haunted - because they had publicly claimed that it was haunted (equitable estoppel). This is a fact driven thing - it was the defendant going around telling everyone that it was haunted. The problem was, they told everyone BUT the buyer.
Turns out the neighbour was trying to buy it for themselves at a reduced price, which is why they had been haunting the house in costume. And they would have got away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for some pesky kids and a big dumb dog!
OK, forgive me if this sounds dense…but why does the defendant even need to argue that? It’s like…does the Court really need someone to argue “the Earth revolves around the Sun?” I mean, why does the Court not accept as a fact that there is no such thing as ghosts, thus the house was never haunted? Why does a basic fact of science require arguing?
Let me do this: I claim now, in public, that the Loch Ness Monster lives in my bathtub. I’m telling you this right now. I’m going to put a sign up in the front yard and buy ad space in the paper. So…say a year from now, Third Party Joe Blough wants to buy my house, and I don’t tell him that the Loch Ness Monster lives in my bathtub, and we go to court after he finds out I didn’t disclose that, I’m not allowed to argue that no, the Loch Ness Monster really does not live in my bathtub? The court cannot possibly be so hidebound by a legal procedure that basic facts must be ignored?
**Una **despite what is sometimes assumed judges actually often have a sense of humour. The judge who wrote the leading judgment in the case clearly had his tongue firmly in his cheek for most of it. You should read it: it’s quite a hoot. Leaving aside the judicial fun, though, essentially the key principle upon which the case was decided is this:
Now whether you agree with this or not probably depends on your social and political and other views on caveat emptor, personal responsibility, saving the unfortunate from themselves etc but I think you would at least agree that the above statement of principle is not inherently irrational: it’s an issue regarding which reasonable people can differ.
The court decided that (without any need to even think about the reality of the supernatural) applying the above principle to the objective facts of the case the purchaser should be relieved from his obligation to complete the purchase. The vendor had gone out of her way to publicise that the house was haunted and this diminished the value of the house - not because it was haunted but because it had that reputation (the market is what it is, even if it comprises a significant component of irrational people). The vendor knew this, the purchaser didn’t and couldn’t know this. Consequently, judgment for the purchaser.
Now. Having reached this outcome on a rational and objective (if arguable) basis, the judge went for comic effect. The judgment is full of bad puns and what passes for yuks amongst lawyers.
For example, the judge pointed out that since the vendor had previously gone out of her way to say that the house was haunted, she was estopped by (ie stuck with) her own lies: no way was he going to let her say it actually *wasn’t *haunted now that (for the purposes of the case) it suited her to do so.
It being alleged that the house was “haunted” and the plaintiff being estopped from alleging to the contrary, the court was legally bound to find that it was haunted. Har har har. Rubin J and his colleagues were chortling about that one in their chambers for weeks. Frankly, it is not even clear on the report that the vendor *attempted to argue *that the house was not haunted. Whether or not the house was actually haunted was not even an issue relevant to the manner in which the court decided the case. I would strongly suspect that the only reason Rubin J went into the whole thing was so he could slip “as a matter of law, the house is haunted” into his judgment for laffs.
To further give you a flavour for where the judge was coming from, later in his judgment he says:
His Honour was just about wetting himself with laughter when he came up with that one. But again, in all seriousness it’s the same theme: if you, Vendor, are going to try to use the presence of poltergeists to get within the language of the contract, I’m going to hoist you by your own petard by playing along.
No and as I said above I don’t think any member of the court thought for a heartbeat that the house was haunted. However, I think the court chose to have fun with the issue because the plaintiff was like someone who has spent their life ripping people off by convincing them that the sun went round the earth, but once the truth suits them for the purposes of the case, they want the truth to prevail. It’s not a matter of being hidebound. It’s a matter of the court saying to a hypocritical party: “If you live by lies, you can die by them!”
It would be irrelvant since it wouldn’t affect the value of your home (because no one would believe you). No harm, no foul.
But if you started a website saying that your house used be a KKK headquarters and that the previous owners lynched a bunch of people and buried them in the basement and you convinced the whole neigborhood that it was true, you would have to tell the owners about it.
Even if the house doesn’t have a basement -
The house can’t possibly have bodies in the basement - there isn’t a basement!
Doesn’t matter - you went around flapping your gums about all of the bodies that were buried there, people think the house has an f’d up history now, whatever.
Even if you can prove in court, that
a) KKK was never in that town
b) the house was never owned by a white person; and
c) there isn’t a basement
so that the ‘story’ about the house is literally impossible - just as impossible as ghosts, it doesn’t matter.
You took action, of your own accord, that caused the house to have a lower property value. You may not hide that from the buyer and then pretend that it’s irrelevant because the facts underlying the story that you’ve been telling are false.
The “haha, I was lying the whole time” defense has a pretty low success rate.
Obviously, the Constitutional limit only applies to federal courts, but the idea is prevalent within the law and state courts abide by the same principles whether they are applied via state constitutions, court rules, or whatever.
You do have the priest come in and bless it. When I was about 10, my mom became convinced something was going on and had the priest come in and bless the house. He walks around, mumbles in Latin and uses a mace to shower holy water everywhere.