Farrokh and Scheherezade Sharabianlou agreed to buy a building owned by Berenstein Associates for $2 million. They deposited $115,000 toward the purchase. Before the deal closed, an environmental assessment of the property indicated the presence of chemicals used in dry cleaning. This substantially reduced the property’s value. Do the Sharabianlous have a good argument for the return of their deposit and rescission of the contract? Explain.

This was an actual court case that ended in the Court of Appeals of the First District of California. Initially a lower court had ruled against the Sharabianlous and set extremely high compensations for damages to Berenstein. I do not understand why the court did it since it was proven that the land was contaminated and couldn't be sold under unless cleaned.

Finally, the court of appeals ruled in favor of the Sharabianlous, not because they thought they were right, but due to errors in the original trial.

The big issue in this case was that the contract signed by the Sharabianlous wasn't clear enough about what would happen if the land was not suitable for sale and they also failed to seek a lawyer when the contamination issues became obvious. If you read the case, even the real estate broker acted against the Sharabianlous when the property was appraised since he didn't tell the appraiser about the contamination issues.

The final ruling was made in 2010, 8 years after the parties engaged in the transaction, which gives us an idea of how complicated things can get when legal procedures are not followed, even though the outcome should be obvious.

If I was part of a jury and the case was about property that couldn't be sold due to contamination, I would probably vote in favor of the buyer, not the seller. It's common sense, but sometimes it you do not follow the appropriate legal path, common sense makes no sense at all.

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