Legal proceedings Report - Essay Example

Legal Proceedings Report Introduction On Thursday 10th of April, I had the opportunity to attend to thecourt sessions in San Diego. During this two hour session, I was able to listen to the proceeding of several different cases that were heard under the Judge Seawright who was the pro-tem magistrate in the court. The Jury was able to give complete judgment following the presentations of evidence and reports from both the defense and the complainants’ sides. In some of the cases, however, the judge told them that they would receive the judgment documents later or by mail. Andrew Gratis v. Hudson Williams Mr. Williams, the defendant in this first case is the only surviving son of a prominent farmer who owned large chunks of land in the area. He does not do farming himself as he is employed by a construction company in West Virginia as an assistant architect. The company has had several litigation cases that required settlement to various families due to poor planning of constructions that led to the loss of life and property. The litigation and settlements led to suspension of Mr. Williams on the ground that he was directly involved in the poor planning and constructions. According to the employment contract signed before employment to the company, the defendant was not to receive any salary for the period he was in suspension. With no other means of obtaining money, and having bills to pay and bank loan to settle, the defendant chose to sell a piece of his late father’s land to make ends meet. It is during this sale that the defendant first met the plaintiff, Mr. Gratis who wanted to buy a piece of land in the area. To settle the deal, the defendant described the piece of land as fertile, virgin and capable of handling 700 cattle with an annual return of US$600,000. The defendant was impressed by this and was willing to pay the required survey fees and the sale price for a piece of land. After a few months, the defendant realized that the land was not as productive as described. It could barely hold 300 cattle and the grassland was rocky and seasonal. The land did not have enough watering points as the stream that was there during the purchase dried off weeks later when the weather changed. The defendant, therefore, filed a case suing the plaintiff of misrepresentation and demanding a refund of full purchase price plus the legal fees. This case concerns voidable contract due to misrepresentation. Misrepresentation refers to a case whereby false statements of an existing fact are made by one party of the contract, mostly the informer, to the other. This usually happens prior to the actual signing of a contract. For information to be regarded as a misrepresentation, it must be a fact rather that an opinion of the informer, it must be related to an existing undisputable fact that both the informer and the informed are aware of, and it must be proven to be so in the court (Miller & Jentz, 2011). Further, the misrepresentation must come from a person who is a party to the contract and addressed to the party misled. In addition, the misled party must prove that he or she relied on this information in making a decision to sign a contract. The consequences of misrepresentation are rescission, whereby the court finds the contract voidable and the request of the plaintiff is granted. The result of this is that the contract is nullified and terminated. In the case presented before the court, the defendant Mr. Williams provided information that the plaintiff regards as misrepresentation information surrounding the piece of land. The land that the defendant said could hold 700 animals could barely hold 300; the land was not fertile as represented by the defendant. On consideration of the merits of this case, the judge has to establish if the plaintiff was aware that the defendant had not been in farming and that he had not used the piece of land for animal keeping. If this is established then the information that the defendant gave concerning the land will be considered as a mere expression of opinions and not qualified to be a misrepresentation. With such an establishment, the plaintiff will not have his requests to terminate the contract granted and the contract will, therefore, be upheld as it originally was. The jury must be able to establish that the plaintiff, Mr. Gratis was a native of the area and knew well that the defendant did not do farming in any of his late father’s lands including the piece of land in question. Therefore, the representation from Mr. Williams will be considered his own opinion and not enough to declare the contract voidable by any means. In the section below, I have reviewed different cases that may form the foundation on which the judge will make a decision on the case above. Anderson Murphy v. Rutherford Hunnington In a similar case of misinterpretation, Mr. Anderson, the plaintiff, purchased a piece of land from a farmer, Mr. Rutherford. The details provided were that the land can produce 100 bags of dry corn. The plaintiff bought this land without knowing that the defendant had not farmed corn on it. However, after the purchase the plaintiff realized that the land was not as productive as explained during the contract negotiations and that the soil was infected by a viral disease that can affect corn growth. It was also discovered that the defendant had never farmed corn on a piece of land. The plaintiff wanted to rescind the contract. In this case, the defendant concealed the information regarding the infected soil and provided false information regarding the production of the piece of land. This is a case of an adhesion contract in which one party has lower bargaining power owing to the absence of information. The defendant concealed the information in order to gain negotiation advantage over the plaintiff. The judge considered this a case of a voidable contract and the plaintiff was granted the right to rescind the contract. The contract was declared void. Walter Chris v. Alder Properties Limited In a different case, the defendant, Alder Properties Limited is a property agency that deals with the sale of plots of land and residential houses. The company is popular for its compliance with the land rules and less complicated purchase and asset transfer process. It has been the favorite agency in the area especially for the real estate business for starters. Besides being the mediator between the owners and prospective buyers, the company issue soft loans to property owners and hold their property and the documents as security to these loans. When the owner is incapable of settling the loan, the company sells the property to recover its money and charges the property owner a sale commission above the interest rates of the loan. In one of these property loans deals, the agency held the land of an undisclosed client for a loan that the said client took. The client was not able to repay the loan in time and the agency advertised the land for sale in their website. The description of the land in the website did not include the information that the piece of land was next to a proposed sewerage treatment site and that the land was originally a public cemetery. Mr. Walter, the plaintiff in this case purchased the land after an initial and hasty pre-visit to the site. The undisclosed information came to his attention months later when he found what seemed to him as human remains in the soil and after the construction of the sewerage treatment site was commenced. He, therefore, sued the agency on the ground that they had the information concerning these two facts and failed to mention it in the contract. Mr. Walter demands a nullification of the contract and refund of his money including damage and legal fees. In ordinary commercial transaction contracts, the parties involved are not obliged to reveal all they may be knowing regarding the proposed agreement or the commodity in question. The seller in the sales contract must, however, not misrepresent the article or provide deceiving information to the buyer. The seller is also not obliged by the law to disclose all the defects and disadvantages related to the article in the contract. The exceptions of this are, however, in the case of consumer protection. Unless the consumer protection is in question, the principle of caveat emptor applies (Fraser, 2010). This is a case of non-disclosure. It involves concealing of crucial information concerning an article involved in the sales contract with the aim of influencing the interpretation of a prospective buyer and having him or her enter into a contract without this information. The plaintiff was willing to buy the piece of land due to the information available when all others was concealed. The defendant might have concealed the information on the knowledge that the plaintiff would decline to enter into a contract if they had the facts about the piece of land. The merits of this case lay on the establishment by the jury that the agency was in possession of the said information before the contract and intentionally failed to publish it in the website alongside other information regarding the property; that the information so disclosed amount to breach of the consumer protection rights and, therefore, it was wrong to disclose it in the first place, and that the buyer, Mr. Walter, would not have purchased the property if the information were disclosed prior to the contract. The court was able to establish that the seller had the information, that this information was intentionally omitted and that it qualifies to be regarded as a breach of the consumer’s protection rights, the contract will be nullified. The rescission of the agreement will mean that the plaintiff receives his demands for refund of the money, the damage and the legal fees. Comparing the witnessed case with that involving a similar sale of land, we find two facts common. First, the productivity of the land was misrepresented in such a way that it appealed to the buyer and contributed to the decision to enter into a contract. Secondly, the information so presented was not factual and only represented the seller’s opinion. However, there are differences in the two cases, first, in a comparative case, the buyer was not aware that the defendant had not used the piece of land to grow corn. He, therefore, must have taken the information regarding the productivity as factual. This is different from the situation in the case just witnessed. Both the buyer and the seller knew that the defendant was not even a farmer, the land belonged to his father. Therefore, there was no basis on which the plaintiff would have been compelled to take the information regarding the capacity of the land as well as its productivity from the defendant as factual. In the second researched case, the defendant concealed some information that would otherwise make the plaintiff reconsider the purchase of the plot. The court established that the defendant was aware of these facts and, therefore, nullified the contract. In the witnessed case, however, the defendant was not a native. He lived far from the land and it is likely he knew little about the actual productivity and water availability of the land. By claiming that the defendant did not disclose that the streams in the land were seasonal, the plaintiff has no legal basis of requesting a rescission of the contract. The plaintiff himself is a native and should have known this better than the defendant. Looking at the way the two researched cases were judged, I find judge’s refusal to rescind the contract in the witnessed case viable. This is because, first, the defendant did not conceal any known information from the plaintiff in an effort to have them sign a contract. Secondly, the undisclosed information was not proven to amount to a breach of consumer protection. Thirdly, the plaintiff knew very well that the defendant had never used the land for farming before and, therefore, would not take the defendants explanation about the quality and the productivity of the land as anything more than an expression of opinion which does not qualify to be regarded as a misrepresentation. The court should, therefore, not rescind the contract. This is on the basis that there was no case of misrepresentation as shown by the plaintiff’s knowledge that the defendant did not practice farming. Further, there was no concealed information in the contract and the plaintiff should have adopted the caveat emptor principle other than depending entirely on the defendant’s opinion. Conclusion I attended the required 2 hours court session and witnessed the proceedings as described in this paper. The presentation and the flow of the presented evidence and information were commendable and made me more interested in the subsequent into the contract law. This is something that helped me develop much deeper insights into what it takes to provide a judgment and how the principles of the law of contract can apply in a variety of situations involving contracts between two parties. It was a great experience putting myself in the judge’s position throughout the proceedings and trying to get the merits of the positions of each of the parties. Reference Fraser, M. (2010). Michigan Real Estate: Principles & practices. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning. Miller, R. & Jentz, G. (2011). Business Law Today: The essentials: text & summarized cases on e-commerce, legal, ethical, and international environment. Harrisburg: John Wiley & Sons. Read More