Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Connecticut
Sewer Damage After Sale of Condo
I sold my condo and now the buyer is trying to sue me for a damages caused by a public sewer backing up. When I lived there it backed up two times in a 5 year period - both from torential storms that the public sewer could not handle. The unit is a basementfirst floor unit. The second time it happened the public sewer company paid to have a backflow valve (which should have been installed by the original builder) installed. I was told this would fix the problem and was confident that it would so i did not indicate any plumbing or sewer problems on the Property Disclosure Report. The plantiff is suggesting I was not being truthful in the disclosure. This is not the case as I was told it was all set after the pipe was installed. How can I be considered liable if I was assured it was fixed. Will I be able to sue them for the attourney fees I have to secure to fight the case? Please advise.
3 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Sewer Damage After Sale of Condo
You may recover attorneys fees if the case goes to trial and you are successfull or the winner. However, a majority of cases are settled before trial. If you need help, you can email me at [email protected].
Re: Sewer Damage After Sale of Condo
Dockter v. Slowik, 91 Conn. App 448 (2005), a case I tried, holds you may be in for a rough ride. In that case the seller had had his well fail twice in 10 years. Both times he had the pump replaced and once had it defracted. He claimed that he thought the repairs corrected the problem, so he didn't indicate any problems in the Seller's Disclosure form. The court disagreed. The purpose of the form is to give an honest history of the house and to put buyers on notice as to what areas they should more fully investigate. The court found the seller guilty of fraud, ordered him to buy the house back and to pay attorney's fees. In the US, each party pays his own attorney fees except in very rare cases. One of those cases is fraud. If the buyer sues you, you will NOT get back your attorney fees, but if the court finds you fraudulently failed to disclose past problems with the back-up, you could end up paying the buyer's attorney's fees. What you should have done was to put on the form that the system backed up during abnormally heavy storms, that the builder should have installed a back-up valve, but that you have been told that when the public sewer company installed the valve, that took care of the problem. That way the buyer is put on notice that there was a problem that was corrected and he can go to the sewer company to investigate. Assuming the sewer company tells him the same thing they told you, problem solved. Now you have the worst of both worlds.
Re: Sewer Damage After Sale of Condo
You are liable for failure to disclose a latent defect, even though you believed it was corrected.
I do not believe they can succeed on a fraud charge as....since you believed it was corrected you did not INTEND to deceive them. BUT failure to disclose is a viable claim.
Even if you succeed, you do not get attorneys fees back.
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