Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Wisconsin

Who is responsible for faulty Central Air?

We purchased our home in March (2-22-02). The realtor (for the seller, we didn't have a buyer's agent) said the air worked and Central Air was included on the MLS sheet. A couple of weeks ago we turned on the Air and it didn't

work. We thought no problem the as the sale included a Home Warranty. We called a repairman and the A/C repairman came in and looked at the system and found it hadn't worked in quite a while. The Home Warranty people refuse to cover the cost saying the A/C wasn't working before we took possession of the house. We called the realtor and she says it was working last fall. She told us that we would be stuck with the repair since the closing has already happened and since they say it worked when they moved out. We couldn't test it so we had to take their word that it worked. It seems that we are gonna get stuck with the repairs of the Central Air on our own. Is there anything that we can do? Do we have any legal recourse on this?


Asked on 7/09/02, 9:38 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Thomas Schober Schober Schober & Mitchell, S.C.

Re: Who is responsible for faulty Central Air?

It would appear that you would have recourse. In

order to proceed, you may need to start a suit

against all the related parties, the broker, the

seller, the HOW warranty company, and maybe the

home inspector, if you had an inspection done.

One concern is the cost. Litigation is very expensive.

If you need to start an action, the value that you

lost must be weighed against the cost of the litigation

and the likelihood of recovery. An experienced

attorney could help you with such a decision. If

the cost is too much, you may consider having the

attorney just write letters, but the effectiveness

of such letter writing is generally much less

effective.

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Answered on 7/09/02, 10:18 am


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