The Absence of Plaintiff’s (Buyer’s) Attorney’s Explicit Unconditional Approval of the Purchase Contract Invalidated the Contract, Despite Plaintiff’s Desire to Go Through with the Purchase

The Fourth Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined that an explicit (not implied) unconditional attorney approval of a real estate contract is a necessary pre-requisite for a valid contract. Here plaintiff’s attorney had approved the contract on the condition that an environmental warranty be provided by the sellers, a condition which was never met or explicitly waived. Despite plaintiff’s desire to go through with the purchase, defendant-sellers’ attorney correctly determined there was no valid contract of sale because plaintiff’s attorney never explicitly unconditionally approved it:

As the Court of Appeals has stated, “[c]larity and predictability are particularly important” in the area of law dealing with attorney approval of real estate contracts … . Here, we conclude that, although plaintiff could have unilaterally waived the environmental conditions that [his attorney] placed on his approval of the contract inasmuch as those conditions benefitted only him …, neither [of plaintiff’s attorneys] clearly and unequivocally did so. Thus, the contract was never unconditionally approved by plaintiff’s attorneys. * * *

“[C]onsiderations of clarity, predictability, and professional responsibility weigh against reading an implied limitation into the attorney approval contingency” … . If [plaintiff’s attorney] intended to waive the conditions placed … on … approval of the contract, he should have done so expressly and not left anything for inference, or he should have stated that he, as plaintiff’s counsel, unconditionally approved the contract as proposed by defendants. Because he failed to do so, we conclude that there was not a valid contract between the parties and that the court erred in directing defendants to sell the property to plaintiffs. Pohlman v Madia, 2015 NY Slip Op 07379, 4th Dept 10-9-15