California law is well-settled with respect to the rule that a seller’s broker is under a legal duty to disclose material facts affecting the value or desirability of the subject property to the buyer where such facts are not known or observable to the buyer. See Easton v. Strassburger, (1984) 152 Cal. App. 3d 90, 99 (citing to Cooper v. Jevne infra (1976) 56 Cal. App. 3d 860, 866 and Lingsch v.Savage (1963) 213 Cal. App. 2d 729, 733). Referred by the Easton Court as the Cooper-Lingsch Rule, the Easton Court described its purpose as follows:
“The primary purposes of the Cooper-Lingsch rule are to protect the buyer from the unethical broker and seller and to insure that the buyer is provided sufficient accurate information to make an informed decision whether to purchase. These purposes would be seriously undermined if the rule were not seen to include a duty to disclose reasonably discoverable defects. If a broker were required to disclose only known defects, but not also those that are reasonably discoverable, he would be shielded by his ignorance of that which he holds himself out to know. The rule thus narrowly construed would have results inimical to the policy upon which it is based. Such a construction would not only reward the unskilled broker for his own incompetence, but might provide the unscrupulous broker the unilateral ability to protect himself at the expense of the inexperienced and unwary who rely upon him. In any case, if given legal force, the theory that a seller’s broker cannot be held accountable for what he does not know but could discover without great difficulty would inevitably produce a disincentive for a seller’s broker to make a diligent inspection. Such a disincentive would be most unfortunate, since in residential sales transactions the seller’s broker is most frequently the best situated to obtain and provide the most reliable information on the property and is ordinarily counted on to do so.”
Easton supra 152 Cal. App. 3d at 99.
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