Court Opinion

ID: 9855310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:22:39.227406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:25:38.104176
License: Public Domain

Mackenzie, J.
Plaintiffs appeal as of right from a judgment of no cause of action entered following a bench trial. We affirm.
Plaintiffs are the would-be buyers of a house owned by Emma Wyant. Defendants are the real estate broker with whom Wyant listed the house for sale and one of its sales agents, Ted Slater. After some negotiations, defendant Slater and plaintiff Stan Andrie drafted a purchase offer for Wyant’s house, which defendant presented to Wyant. Wyant, who had rejected an earlier offer by plaintiffs, accepted the offer and signed a purchase agreement, uninformed by Slater of a change in terms from plaintiffs’ previous offer. Later that day, Wyant attempted to stop the trans*335action. When plaintiffs learned that Wyant wished to void the agreement, plaintiffs contacted their attorney and Slater, both of whom assured plaintiffs that the agreement with Wyant was valid. Plaintiffs then sold their home through defendants. Wyant was ultimately granted rescission of the purchase agreement, in part because of Slater’s breach of fiduciary duty in inadequately presenting plaintiffs’ offer to her. In this related suit, plaintiffs claimed that defendants were liable to them on several theories, including negligence. Specifically, plaintiffs claimed that Slater breached his duty to plaintiffs to accurately and truthfully present their offer to Wyant.
The trial court found that Slater owed a duty to Wyant, his principal, to accurately present a prospective purchaser’s offer, but that he owed no such duty to plaintiffs as prospective buyers. We agree.
Real estate brokers and salesmen are the agents of the seller, their principal. See McMullen v Joldersma, 174 Mich App 207, 212; 435 NW2d 428 (1988); Minchella v Fredericks, 138 Mich App 462, 467-468; 360 NW2d 896 (1984). Brokers and salespersons therefore owe the seller a fiduciary duty, which presumably includes the duty to disclose fully and fairly the material terms of any offers to purchase the seller’s property. See Horvath v Langel, 276 Mich 381, 385; 267 NW 865 (1936).
We have found no Michigan cases addressing the issue whether a realtor may also owe a duty to a prospective real estate buyer to properly convey an offer to the seller. An analogous issue was addressed in Wilson v Haimbaugh, 482 NE2d 486 (Ind App, 1985), however. In that case, the plaintiff-purchaser sued the seller’s agent for failing to procure or furnish title insurance or a certified continuation of abstract for real property *336sold to the purchaser. The plaintiff argued that the defendant-agent breached a duty owed to the seller, causing the plaintiff damages. Id. at 487. In reversing a lower court decision in favor of the plaintiff-purchaser, the Wilson court stated:
[Plaintiff] has not shown, nor has this Court been able to find, any authority for the proposition that a vendor’s agent owes a duty to procure or furnish title insurance or a certified continuation of abstract to the purchaser. Rather, [plaintiff] maintains that he should recover because of the agent’s negligence in performing the duty she owes to her principal. However, an agent who negligently fails to perform duties owed to her principal is not thereby liable to a person whose economic interests are thereby harmed. Restatement Agency, 2d, § 357 (1958).
Therefore, as [the agent] did not breach any duty which she owed to [plaintiff], the trial court erred in awarding a judgment in favor of [plaintiff] on his claim against [the agent]. [Id.]
A similar result was reached in Haldiman v Gosnell Development Corp, 155 Ariz App 585; 748 P2d 1209 (1987). The plaintiff in Haldiman entered into a home-purchase agreement prepared by the developer’s agent, a licensed real estate salesman. When she was unable to close escrow on the new home within the agreed time, she forfeited her earnest money deposit pursuant to the sales contract. The plaintiff sued the developer, claiming that the sales agent breached a duty to her, as the purchaser, to clearly explain the contract provision allowing such forfeiture in the event of an inability to close escrow on the stated date. Id. at 588. In affirming the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant, the Haldiman court held that absent a broker-client relationship between the plaintiff-purchaser and *337the agent, there was no breach of a duty to uphold professional real estate standards by the agent. Id. at 590.
A similar conclusion was reached in Allen v Lindstrom, 237 Va 489; 379 SE2d 450 (1989). There, in one of three consolidated cases, the prospective purchasers sued a realtor for failure to transmit their offer to the sellers. The prospective purchasers-plaintiffs argued that such behavior was against the rules and regulations of the Virginia Real Estate Board which require every realtor to promptly submit to the seller every offer received. Id. at 498. The Allen court concluded that, while the realtor may have owed a duty to the sellers, he did not owe a duty to the prospective purchasers to communicate an offer to the sellers. Id.
Unless a legal duty exists, there can be no actionable negligence. Duvall v Goldin, 139 Mich App 342, 347; 362 NW2d 275 (1984). Duty is essentially a question whether the relationship between the actor and the injured person gives rise to any legal obligation on the actor’s part for the benefit of the injured person. Moning v Alfono, 400 Mich 425, 438-439; 254 NW2d 759 (1977). In negotiating a real estate sale, any relationship between the seller’s agent and the potential buyer is a commercially antagonistic one, with each side working for his best advantage and not for the benefit of the other. We therefore conclude that a seller’s real estate broker or agent owes no duty to a potential buyer to properly convey a purchase offer to the seller.
Affirmed.
Reilly, P.J., concurred.