Case Two:
Yankee Get Home
The Plaintiff: Mortimer Ricketybones
– A retired NY couple now re-retiring to Myrtle Beach. He claims the defendant breeched a realty (pronounced REELuhty) contract and owes him over $7000 for his motel bills, meals and a Realtor’s (REELuhter) lost commission.
The Defendant: Elmer Gudolboy
– A dude from up nawth who has lived here twenty years and now considers himself a local. He says he was waiting to sign the papers when the old guy found another house and left him hanging.
Last year more people moved to the Independent Republic of Horry County from Florida than from any other state. The trend in Yankees moving to Florida is changing due to the High Crime and Cost of houses in the Sunshine State, plus the fact that Geezers have a hard time making the drive from Dade County to Lonnnnge Eyeland for Christmas in less than a week. As you know, folks from the other side of the twentieth century have a natural born fear of “them flying contraptions” so the best alternative to paradise is the palmetto state. Plus we have more golf courses so the menfolk can dawdle about and ignore the missus for quite some time before they’ve played ’em all.
The Case:
Mr. Morty Ricketybones came up and looked at Elmer Gudolboy’s house in Early August. Said he wanted that baby, surenuff.
“How long till yous can vacate the premises and give me possession?”
“I reckon I could find me another place to live perty quick”, Said Elmer.
They strike a deal and Morty gets his Realtor to scribble up a contract, contingent on the purchase of another house by Elmer and set a date of Sept 27 as the closing. A lawyer apparently dots the T’s and crosses her eyes.
Just a few days later, Elmer calls up Morty and tells him he has a rush deal on a little house that he can live in till he builds on a plot of land he has in mind. Says he’s probably gonna settle up on about August 15 on account of the little house is vacant and ready to go.
Morty Proceeds to call in the Teamsters and have his kit and caboodle hauled up to Myrtle toot sweet. He arrives on the 15th of August and tells Elmer that he’s ready to move in.
“Well dang”, says Elmer “The ink ain’t dry on the papers for my new place and I have got to pack up twenty years of accumulations and get all moved. Besides, I still need to finish up that little list of doo dads from your house inspector’s run through. And the dadburn closin date is set for the 27th.”
“Sheesh!” replies Morty.
So Morty and the missus move in to the motel with the two dogs and commence to waiting.
On the 26th he finally goes by the house with his inspector to check off the list of 11 items that were noted in the inspection report.
Pay attention here because it gets sticky
Among the 11 things on the report are danglin’ soffit and missing shingles. Mr Morty doesn’t go around back and look at the soffit or crawl up on the roof to check for missing shingle tabs.
For those of you who don’t get many hurricanes, shingles can get all tore up and you need to slide some back in now and then. Its just normal wear and tear.
The Gudolboy family was still moving out – boxes all over the house, two pieces of furniture still inside.
Morty’s Reeluhter, Willie Gettit, testified that the house didn’t look ready the night before closing. On cross, he admitted that he did not look at the specific items in question. Just that it didn’t look ready.
Next morning at 10 when the closing is supposed to take place Morty was at his Lawyers office. Elmer never showed. He has his lawyer fax a release from the contract to Elmer’s Lawyer and he goes looking for another house.
He claims Elmer wanted to sell to someone else at a higher price and blew the deal on purpose.
(reload the page for the theme song again)
The Defense:
Elmer gets up in court and asks Morty if he ever actually inspected the property on the morning of closing and confirmed it was not ready to sell.
Morty says, “It wasn’t ready the afternoon before how could you get it ready in one night?”
Elmer says he finished up the moving and a few minor repairs and was waiting at his lawyers office across town on the closing date. He says Morty’s lawyer never called his lawyer and just faxed a release from the contract.
Elmer’s Lawyer closes with the fact that either Morty’s Reeluhter or Lawyer added the phrase “Time is of the essence” on the contract so expectation to close on the closing date was, well, “not how we do it in South Carolina”. Morty never called to negotiate any of the things he found unreasonable and Morty had in fact been eying Elmer’s neighbor’s house, which was priced lower. It was he who ended the deal and no one else was responsible. “Pay the motel man and get on with your life, dude.”
The Magistrate Charges the Jury
: South Carolina law only expects a contract to be carried out on time when the phrase “Time is of the essence” appears directly after the date by which the contract is to be carried out. Really. Don’t expect anything in this state to be done on time unless you offer a bonus for early finish or stipulate a penalty for late performance and you had better jot “Time is of the essence” right there in black ink.
Deliberation
: Because the plaintiff chose not to hire a lawyer, he was not quite as thorough as he should have been (just being from New York does not make you a lawyer) so the only article which he entered into evidence was the contract for sale of the house. No inspectors report. No motel bills. No pictures of the roof. Nuttin.
The one thing that had bugged me throughout the whole case was that from the opening statements both parties had each claimed to be at separate lawyers offices on the closing date. I was determined that the one who was at the location stipulated on the contract would be the one I was going to vote for.
When The contract made it around the table and was in front of me I could not believe what I saw.
…take place at to be determined
I was flabbergasted. Many other Jurors were set back as well.
Horry County has one of the highest Reeluhter to population ratios in the world. We have had a property value boom for the last 15 years that just topped out this past summer. The result of which was that every person who could focus on the strenuous 1 day course and pass the arduous 1 page exam was welcomed to the fraternity. The more closings, the more the prices soared. So, as you can rightly understand, about a third of the people on the jury either were a Reeluter or married to one.
The Reeluhter that was trying to get his commission from the failed deal had written such a sloppy contract that he had done himself in. We could easily believe that Elmer had indeed been sitting in his lawyer’s office waiting for Morty’s Solicitor to make the deal happen on the date in question.
Verdict
:We unanimously found for the Defendant. The plaintiff had not proved his case and more importantly had such bad representation for the deal that we believed his shyster probably did not call the other advocate to say, “let’s get together.”
Result
: We found out later that this case had been going on for over three years. It was the second time to go before a court, the first being thrown out by a judge on point of Law because Morty did something against procedure. Evidently Morty felt he would have sympathy of the Jury because he was old, he had to stay in a motel and he had two Weimaraners, one of which died four days after the sale fell through.
Morty bought a house around the corner from Elmer’s, for less money and closed in 18 days.