In 1989, New York City resident Jeffrey Strambovsky entered into a contract with Helen Ackley to purchase Ackley's Victorian house in Nyack, New York for $650,000. Neither Ackley nor her real estate agent bothered to mention during the negotiations that the home also featured three resident ghosts. Upon hearing of the haunting--after signing the contract but prior to closing--Strambovsky filed a lawsuit for damages and for rescission (a legal term meaning "I want to wuss out of the deal") based on Ackley's failure to disclose a condition (i.e. the presence of ghosts) of the property which could not otherwise be determined by a reasonable inspection of the real estate.
Ackley's lawyer, invoking the doctrine of caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware") convinced the lower court that the seller did not have a duty to tell the potential buyer every little thing which could be wrong with the property, as long as she did not affirmatively misrepresent the facts by specifically saying "the house is not haunted." If the buyer simply failed to ask if there were spirits on the property, it was his fault for not doing so.
The appellate court, however, in a 3-2 opinion, reversed the decision. Ackley had several times in the past told local newspapers as well as the Reader's Digest that the house was occupied by ghosts. Having done so, she was "estopped" from asserting at trial a contrary position, and the judges therefore presumed, at least legally, that the house was haunted. The appellate court further determined that a haunted house is worth less than an unhaunted one, that Strambovsky had no reason to suspect that it was haunted, and that equity required that he be able to squirm out of the contract. The court further pointed out that were it to rule otherwise, the standard home inspection done for a buyer would include not only a structural engineer and a guy from Terminix but also a medium or a psychic.
The court did find, however, that Ackley did not owe Strambovsky additional money for damages, as she did not affirmatively lie about the haunting but merely failed to mention it.
The spectre of yielding to the temptation to shade this factoid with numerous ghost puns is overwhelming. However, the court in its opinion already did so, and in the spirit of compassion, as well as in the interest of avoiding my readers' wraith, I will not repeat them here.
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