Opinion ID: 2832664
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Right of First Refusal: Contract

Text: [¶25] Concerning these parties, however, the ROFR is separately binding as a matter of contract law.4 No party contests the applicability of the AOP contract, 4 The perpetuities problem just discussed is not presented in an analysis of the parties’ contractual agreements. As stated by one learned treatise, 13 in which each of them “reaffirm[ed] the covenants in their deeds respecting the right of first refusal accorded individual property co-tenants or Island co-tenants.” Pew was a signatory to the AOP, and the Cooke Trustees, although not signatories, do not contest the trial court’s factual finding that they intended to be bound by it. Demonstrating that intent, Cooke voiced no objection when the trial court inserted the ROFR covenant referenced by the AOP into the Cooke deed. It is clear that until the present dispute arose, these parties and their predecessors intended to be bound by the contractual provisions of the AOP, including its incorporation of the explicit language of the ROFR. See Barr v. Dyke, 2012 ME 108, ¶ 13, 49 A.3d 1280. [¶26] In addition to the AOP, Pew, as an original owner, was also a party to the Letter of Agreement, specifying that “it is agreed that, if any owners wish to dispose of [their] interest, that interest will first be offered to the Other Owners to provide them with the opportunity first to purchase the interest”; the Purchase and Sale Agreement, signed by the original buyers, in which the seller agreed to insert [c]ontracts are normally excluded from the necessity of complying with the rule against perpetuities. From a remoteness viewpoint, transactions purely contractual do not involve future interests in specific property; hence there can be no problem at all of remote vesting. From a more realistic viewpoint, no fettering of specific property can be created by a transaction exclusively contractual in character, such as a right of first refusal. 10 Richard R. Powell & Michael Allan Wolf, Powell on Real Property § 72.07 (2015). 14 in each of the buyer’s deeds, including Pew’s, the ROFR that now appears there; and the conveyance to Pew of the deed containing the ROFR.