Supreme Court justice J. Michael Eakin
Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice J. Michael Eakin. Read Eakin's profile.
Sellers of properties where horrific events - such as murders - have occurred do not have a legal obligation to tell prospective buyers about those tragedies, the state Supreme Court has determined.
The high court's ruling, issued late Monday, addresses a dispute over the sale of a Delaware County house that was the setting for a murder-suicide.
But in the wider sense, that majority opinion penned by Justice J. Michael Eakin affirms that such "psychological stigmas" as slayings do not have to be disclosed to would-be home buyers because they do not constitute a "material defect" of the property.
A material defect, for example, would involve a structural problem, such as a cracked foundation or a leaking roof.
"We hold that a murder-suicide does not constitute an actionable material defect," Eakin wrote.
The case the Supreme Court decided involved a lawsuit filed by Janet Milliken, a California woman who bought a home in Thornton from Kathleen and Joseph Jacono for $610,000 in 2007. Months earlier, the Jaconos had purchased the property from the estate of Konstantinos Koumboulis, who in February 2006 had shot and killed his wife Georgia and then killed himself in the house.
Eakin noted in his opinion that the Koumboulis murder/suicide was highly publicized, both locally and via the internet.
In placing the house back on the market, the Jaconos had contacted the state Real Estate Commission and the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors Legal Hotline and received assurances that they had no legal obligation to list the occurrence of the murder/suicide as a material defect on disclosure statements to potential buyers.
Although realty agents suggested disclosure of the tragedy "would be a good idea, just to get it out there," the Jaconos decided not to mention it to buyers, Eakin noted.
As she considered purchasing the house, Milliken did ask her own realtor why the Jaconos had owned the property for only a few months and had bought it from an estate. Her realtor suggested a mortgage foreclosure as a possible reason, and Milliken didn't look into the issue further, Eakin wrote.
It was only after Milliken moved into the house that a neighbor told her of the murder-suicide. She claimed in her lawsuit that she never would have bought the house had she known of that event.
The Supreme Court agreed to consider the case after the Delaware County Court and state Superior Court granted summary judgments in favor of the Jaconos and their RE/MAX-affiliated realtor, dismissing Milliken's suit.
"Regardless of the potential impact a psychological stigma may have on the value of property, we are not ready to accept that such constitutes a material defect," Eakin concluded in backing the lower court rulings.
"The varieties of traumatizing events that could occur on a property are endless," he added. "Efforts to define those that would warrant mandatory disclosure would be a Sisyphean task."
The justice went on to list an array of scenarios - suicides, stabbings, poisonings, rapes, home invasions, satanic rituals - saying it would be impossible to quantify the psychological impact of different genres of such horrors.
He noted as well that not all buyers would regard a tragedy in the same way. There are some, he observed, who might even consider high-profile tragedies as enhancing the provenance, and possibly even the value of a property, especially as time mellows the sharper edges of the event.
Besides, Eakin observed, "the occurrence of a tragic event inside a house does not affect the quality of the real estate, which is what seller disclosure duties are intended to address."
Any other tack would place an "unmanageable burden on sellers," he found.
He noted, too, that Milliken, who had sued to secure a voiding of her sales contract and return of her money, could have researched the home's history after questions arose about the brief time the Jaconos owned it.
She "possessed the tools to discover the murder/suicide and did not do so," Eakin wrote.