Opinion ID: 1349964
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the sale in question

Text: After more than a decade in automobile dealerships, Broekemeiers, as sole shareholders in their corporate automobile dealerships, listed the dealerships' property for sale in December 1978 at $597,000 through Landmark Realty and its agent, Clatanoff. On January 16, 1979, Combs and Pearson extended an oral offer to purchase the dealerships' property for $526,000 in cash. Thereafter, on February 16 and February 20, 1979, the parties executed two identical contracts of sale for the property. Each contract document consisted of 5 pages and contained 24 numbered paragraphs, including provisions for payment of the $490,000 purchase price, that is, $240,000 paid before closing, with the $250,000 balance payable over a term of 10 years, with interest. The contracts also required that the purchasers, Combs and Pearson, would grant their mortgage on the dealerships' Seward County real estate, valued at $350,000, as security for payment of the contract price. On May 23, the parties met to close the sale in accordance with the February contracts. Although a lawyer was representing Broekemeiers in the transaction, Willis Broekemeier, without the lawyer, attended the closing. A Seller's Settlement Sheet was circulated at the closing and reflected a sale price of $490,000, with a Contract amount carried back by seller... $250,000.00. Willis Broekemeier placed his signature on the settlement sheet at the closing. Combs and Pearson executed a $250,000 mortgage on the real estate purchased from the dealerships. That mortgage was recorded in Seward County in May 1979. According to Willis Broekemeier, he assumed that a copy of the contracts would be delivered to his lawyer. When the copies were not forthcoming, Willis Broekemeier, at some unspecified time, requested that the defendants supply him with a copy of each contract, but this request was unfulfilled. In 1982, Broekemeier Ford, by its president, Willis Broekemeier, assigned to The Cattle National Bank of Seward the 1979 Combs-Pearson mortgage. The assignment was collateral for Broekemeier Ford's indebtedness to the bank and expressly referred to the Combs-Pearson real estate mortgage granted as a result of the 1979 contracts, including reference to the book and page of the mortgage records of Seward County, where the mortgage had been on record since May 1979.