{"id":597,"date":"2013-07-07T21:27:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T21:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=597"},"modified":"2023-12-21T17:16:54","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T17:16:54","slug":"court-holds-that-a-seller-has-no-duty-to-reveal-that-a-murder-suicide-took-place-in-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2013\/07\/07\/court-holds-that-a-seller-has-no-duty-to-reveal-that-a-murder-suicide-took-place-in-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Court holds that a seller has no duty to reveal that a murder\/suicide took place in the house"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A Pennsylvania trial court held that a seller had no duty to reveal that a murder\/suicide took place in the house.\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/lawyersusaonline.com\/wp-files\/pdfs-3\/milliken-v-jacono.pdf\" class=\"mtli_attachment mtli_pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Milliken v. Jacono<\/a>, 60 A.3d 133 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2013). The court interpreted a state statute that required sellers to reveal &#8220;material defects&#8221; and found that events that had happened in the house were not a &#8220;material defect&#8221; in the physical structure of the property. The court declined to find any common law duty to reveal the information on the ground &#8220;an expansion of required seller disclosures from the physical to the psychological is a massive expansion in the character of disclosure. It requires the seller to warn not only of the physically quantifiable but also of utterly subjective defects.&#8221;\u00a0<em>Id.<\/em>\u00a0at 140. A dissenting opinion would have found such an obligation because &#8220;[r]eputation and history can have a significant effect on the value of realty.&#8221;\u00a0Id. at 145 (Bender, J., dissenting).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/consumer-protection\/\" rel=\"tag\">Consumer Protection<\/a><span class=\"wp-block-post-terms__separator\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/real-estate-transactions\/\" rel=\"tag\">Real Estate Transactions<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Pennsylvania trial court held that a seller had no duty to reveal that a murder\/suicide took place in the house.\u00a0Milliken v. Jacono, 60 A.3d 133 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2013). The court interpreted a state statute that required sellers to reveal &#8220;material defects&#8221; and found that events that had happened in the house were not a &#8220;material defect&#8221; in the physical structure of the property. The court declined to find any common law duty to reveal the information on the ground &#8220;an expansion of required seller disclosures from the physical to the psychological is a massive expansion in the character of disclosure. It requires the seller to warn not only of the physically quantifiable but also of utterly subjective defects.&#8221;\u00a0Id.\u00a0at 140. A dissenting opinion would have found such an obligation because &#8220;[r]eputation and history can have a significant effect on the value of realty.&#8221;\u00a0Id. at 145 (Bender, J., dissenting).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-protection","category-real-estate-transactions"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}