Parents are demented and residing in an assisted living. POA child arranges to sell their house. Buyers find rodents and other allegedly undisclosed defects and sue for damages. Trial Court dismisses the case on summary disposition and, in an unpublished opinion, Court of Appeals affirms.
The COA says that because agent/child did not know about the defects, it wasn’t fraud for her to fail to disclose them. The only thing the buyers really had to point to was a half-completed disclosure form, which agent/child ill-advisedly attempted to complete. The COA said that failure to disclose information in that form is not a separate cause of action, and, at least in this case, not enough to support a claim of silent or common law fraud.
To read Locher v Estate of Bradley M. Zimmerman, click here.