A reasonable View on the Post Office Development

rammz, see below. You must have missed it. Lots of posts today.

sarahzm said:

There was a huge court case regarding Towaco /Montville.  The seller and realtor inadvertently misidentified the neighborhood and the penalty was hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

ramzzoinksus said:

sarahzm said:

ramzzoinksus said:

sarahzm, That is an absurd statement. They would not have a case.

It may be absurd,  but there have been similar cases and they have won. 

 Point to one.

 THEODORE et al. v. WOODMONT PROPERTIES, L.L.C., WOODMONT COURT AT MONTVILLE, L.L.C.

The info that I found on line did not include the outcome , which was a settlement of over $100,000.  

When I started in real estate 20 years ago I was told about a transaction that fell apart on the day of closing.  The house was represented to be in Short Hills but at the walk through the buyers saw mail with a Millburn address. Further investigation showed that the house was indeed in Millburn, not Short hills.   The buyers withdrew - and they got their deposit back.    All parties recognized that there would likely be a lawsuit if the deposit was not returned.

I agree that it is absurd, but that does not make it less real.

Facts aren't going to sway their opinions, unfortunately.

Except it seems in that case the jury found AGAINST the plaintiff who claimed that they were damaged by being sold the house in an area other than they thought. From what I can see a judge first dismissed the case on summary judgement, on appeal it was ordered to trial but the jury rejected the plaintiff and an appeals court declined to reverse.

I'm not an attorney, but it looked to me that the jury  found for the plaintiff on point one and ordered a new trial but found against the plaintiff on point two.

Sarah is correct. The following is from the opinion:

"On point one, plaintiffs argue that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. We find no merit in this contention. Although the jury found that Dingle made a misrepresentation concerning the property's location or the school plaintiffs' children would attend, it does not necessarily follow that the jury was compelled to conclude that the misrepresentation caused plaintiffs an ascertainable loss. Plaintiffs staked their case concerning ascertainable loss on the testimony of their real estate expert Nolan. However, based on our review of the entire record, we conclude that a reasonable jury may have found his testimony unpersuasive. Nolan did not perform an appraisal of the house plaintiffs purchased, and his testimony that they overpaid for the house was essentially a net opinion. In any event, the jury was not obligated to accept his opinion, and it is neither our function nor the trial court's function to second-guess the jury's credibility determinations. See State v. Haines, 20 N.J. 438, 446 (1956) ("Credibility is truly an issue for the jury.").
Moreover, the jury was not obligated to accept plaintiffs' testimony that they bought the house primarily because they believed it was located in the Montville section. While the jury may not have found Dingle to be a credible witness, they may have been equally unimpressed with plaintiffs' testimony. Reasonable jurors may have concluded that plaintiffs knew the house's location or that, if they did not know, they would nonetheless have purchased the house regardless of which section of the Township it was located in."

The Plaintiff's argument that the neighborhood mattered and was misrepresented won. However they couldn't prove actual monetary damages because of the weakness of their expert's testimony. So from the point of view of a Real Estate Broker confusing Short Hills with the other part of Millburn can cost you a law suit.

But since the jury found against the plaintiff on monetary damage there was no large payout as contended. And the issue and contention of value was more than just "neighborhood" designation. It was that the misrepresentation put them in the district of an inferior elementary school. Which is a different issue entirely.

Well,  that could be said of Short Hills.  Milburn feeds to two specific elementary schools, Short Hills feeds to three different elementary schools.

It looks like I was wrong about the penalty.  I was told ( in a risk reduction class)  that the Towaco/Montville lawsuit resulted in a settlement of over $100,000, but perhaps the instructor was exaggerating to make a point.

There are several other cases as well, but I don't remember enough of the details to look them up.  

I do know that this is carefully taught to realtors as part of risk reduction, that misrepresenting a neighborhood can result in a lawsuit, and that the courts NJ have repeatedly recognized the existence and value of specific unincorporated neighborhoods within municipalities.

I imagine that if you misrepresented the elementary school situation in Maplewood you could be in trouble and there is only one zip code.

Elementary school zones in Maplewood are fluid.   A few years ago they moved two streets from one elementary school zone to another.  The brouhaha that followed was huge.  At least one sale the affected streets fell apart.

Also, since some elementary schools are overcrowded ( particularly Tuscan) children who are not registered early for kindergarten are in danger of being blocked out and sent to other schools.

My perception is that there used to be a marked difference in value between the different school zones in Maplewood.  That difference seems to have evaporated in the last year or two as insiders seem to recognize that all the elementary schools are good.  Now the premium seems to be based more on proximity to the train and the condition of the house.  Just my own observation.

ramzzoinksus said:

But since the jury found against the plaintiff on monetary damage there was no large payout as contended. 

 I imagine that the defendant's legal fees were outrageous since plaintiff appealed, went through an entire trial and appealed again.

http://www.theonion.com/article/decaying-city-just-wants-skip-part-where-it-gets-r-50409

*parody and sarcasm

apple44 said:

Actually I recall many posts over the years - many - in which people stated that they found the service in the old village p.o. lacking, and recommended Vauxhall instead. For people to drive to another town to use a post office, I would suggest that fits a definition of being broken.

author said:

It was not broke but we fixed it.

 

 I have been going to the Vauxhall PO for a number of years and continue to do so.