Court Opinion

ID: 9781319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:30:33.643816+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:25.437741
License: Public Domain

Leben, J.,
concurring: Called stare decisis by lawyers and others who like Latin, respect for precedent counsels that when a matter has already been decided by a court, we are reluctant to revisit the matter. People rely upon the decisions of courts when making choices in transactions, and lawyers provide advice in these transactions based upon the law as we have already explained it. Indeed, respect for precedent is central to governance under the rule of law. Though precedents sometimes need to be overruled, e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 41 L. Ed. 256, 16 S. Ct. 1138 (1896), “the rule of law demands that adhering to our prior case law be the norm” and “[djeparture from precedent is exceptional.” Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230, 244, 165 L. Ed. 2d 482, 126 S. Ct. 2479 (2006).
*269I concur in the result reached here by the majority based on this court’s recent decisions in McLellan v. Raines, 36 Kan. App. 2d 1, 140 P.3d 1034 (2006), and Brennan v. Kunzle, 37 Kan. App. 2d 365, 154 P.3d 1094 (2007). In both of those cases, this court held that the same seller’s disclosure statement given in our case to the Katzenmeiers could not form the basis for any misrepresentation claim because each buyer had signed a provision at the bottom of the form saying that the buyer did not rely on any representations of the seller “except as may be fully set forth in writing and signed by them.” Somehow, that has twice been read by this court as a waiver of any reliance the buyer had on the seller’s written disclosures found earlier in the same document and signed by that seller. If I were writing on a clean slate, I would find that the buyer did not waive reliance based on this document.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at the practical implication: imagine that you are the buyer’s real estate agent in a transaction in which this form is used. The seller has filled out a disclosure form in which the seller specifically agreed “to disclose to buyer all material defects, conditions and facts known to seller which may materially affect the value of the property.” The disclosure form also provides that it “is an integral part of the agreement between seller and buyer.” Your buyer reads (he disclosure, including the seller’s statement that water has never leaked into the basement.
Your buyer is understandably relieved but then reads the “buyer’s acknowledgment and agreement” at the bottom. Right above the buyer’s signature line is a statement that “there are no important representations concerning the condition or value of the property made by seller or broker on which I am relying except as may be fully set forth in writing and signed by them.”
After reading that sentence, the buyer then asks you, “Now, if I sign this, can I still rely on what the seller has already said on this very form and signed? Or is it as if the seller hadn’t told me that he’d never had any leaks in the basement?” What would you tell them, assuming you haven’t read the recent McLellan or Brennan cases?
*270The answer seems plain to me. The seller has just made a number of representations in a written document and signed that document. The buyer obviously reviews the document after the disclosures are made because nothing else would make sense, and the buyer s acknowledgment even appears right after the seller’s disclosures on the form. The buyer is saying that there are no representations other than those found on this form upon which the buyer is relying.
With support from McLellan and Brennan, however, the majority contends that the “plain language” of that provision requires the buyer to prepare some extra document “to state which statements they were relying on in writing” and then the additional step of having the seller sign that other document. However, the language of the buyer’s acknowledgment does not support that conclusion. The document quotes the buyer: “I specifically represent that there are no important representations concerning the condition or value of the property made by seller or broker on which I am relying except as may be fully set forth in writing and signed by them.” (Emphasis added.)
The buyer is unequivocally the subject (“I”) of this sentence. Due to the usage of the first-person pronoun, the buyer is grammatically eliminated as a member of the third-person “by them” phrase. If the buyer were the individual required to create an extra document, then a “by me” would have been grammatically demanded in the sentence. In that case, the sentence would have ended “except as may be fully set forth in writing by me and signed by them.”
As such, the seller has already satisfied both parts of the phrase actually used because the seller has set forth in writing and signed the disclosures, all contained in the very same document. To suggest that yet another document was needed for the buyer to be able to rely upon what the seller has already put in writing and signed renders the disclosure statement without any legal effect. The seller may make bald-faced lies in it, and the buyer will not be heard by the courts in complaint. It is unfortunate that both McLellan and Brennan have bought this argument.
*271The majority also concludes that any reliance by the Katzenmeiers is precluded by Alires v. McGehee, 277 Kan. 398, 85 P.3d 1191 (2004). The majority tells us that Alires “made it abundantly clear that a buyer of real estate cannot reasonably rely on representations of a seller when the truth or falsity of the representations would have been discovered by an inspection of the property . . . .” 39 Kan. App. 2d at 267. There were no inspections in Alires, but here there were two inspections that found no evidence of water damage. The inspections noted only very minor water problems, mainly some water on the floor of a bathroom that the seller said had been fixed by regrading some dirt outside the building. But the importance of such information is far different when the owner has said that he has never been aware of any water leakage in the building than it would be in the absence of such a representation. A reasonable buyer may want to proceed to purchase a building that had only a single instance of water on a bathroom floor over a 10-year period but not want to buy the same building if the owner honestly discloses that it has leaked at least once a month for the past 10 years.
The majority cites Alires, McLellan, Brennan, and several other cases for the proposition that “Kansas courts have adopted a ‘buyer beware’ standard regarding sellers’ disclosures.” 39 Kan. App. 2d at 267. The majority may well be right. But this is exactly what Professor William E. Westerbeke rightly warned against. His words bear repeating: “[Cjourts should . . . monitor the use of such disclaimers to ensure that they do not evolve into an unfair device to avoid . . . responsibility in these transactions.” Westerbeke, Survey of Kansas Tort Law: Part II, 50 Kan. L. Rev. 225, 280 (2002). While I believe that respect for precedent requires me to go along with McLellan and Brennan because they are two recent published decisions of this court, the Kansas Supreme Court is free to consider the issues addressed here without any duty to follow our own past holdings. I encourage the court to do so.
On a motion for summary judgment, all facts are supposed to be viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. The district court granted summary judgment here, based upon Mc-Lellan, because it concluded that the Katzenmeiers could not show *272any reasonable reliance on any of the seller’s representations without some additional writing beyond the seller’s disclosure form. If I were ■writing on a clean slate, I would reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment. Under the standards applicable to summary judgment and the facts of this case, the Katzenmeiers should have had a right to rely upon the representations in the seller’s disclosure form, and those representations were material to the transaction.