South Carolina law

Hot off the presses UPL case!

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(But it only affects real estate peripherally)

The South Carolina Supreme Court handed down a UPL decision in a declaratory judgment action in its original jurisdiction on February 22.*

The Court accepted the action to determine whether Community Management Group, LLC and its employees engaged in the unauthorized practice of law while managing homeowners’ associations. The Court found that the respondents did, in fact, engage in UPL. At the outset of the case, the Court had issued a temporary injunction halting the offending activities.

Community Management Group, without the involvement of an attorney, prepared and recorded notices of liens and related documents; brought actions in magistrates’ courts to collect debts; and filed the resulting judgments in circuit courts. The entity also advertised that it would perform these services “in house”.

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In a 1992 administrative order entitled In re Unauthorized Practice of Law Rules Proposed by South Carolina Bar**,  the Court had modified prior case law to allow a business to be represented by a non-lawyer officer, agent or employee. The Court had also promulgated South Carolina Magistrate Court Rule 21, which provides, “A business…may be represented in a civil magistrates’ court by a non-lawyer officer, agent or employee…”

The central question in the action at hand was whether the word “agent” in these authorities includes third party entities and individuals like Community Management Group and its employees. The Court held it does not and was never intended to.

The Court had earlier held that filing claims in probate courts does not amount to UPL, but stated in the present case that it is the character of the services rendered that determines whether the services constitute the practice of law. Filing claims in Probate Court, according to the Court, does not require the professional judgment, specialized knowledge or ability of an attorney. The Court found that the services required to represent a business in magistrates’ courts are not comparable to filing claims in probate courts.

Community Management Group conceded that it prepared a lien document for the purpose of putting a cloud on title so property could not be sold unless the homeowner paid overdue assessments. This stated purpose demonstrated to the Court that the lien documents were “instruments”, that is, written legal documents that define rights, duties, entitlements or liabilities.

Citing a 1987 case near and dear to the hearts of all South Carolina dirt lawyers, State v. Buyers Service***, the Court reminded us that preparing and recording legal documents is the practice of law.

This current case is a Per Curiam decision, but acting Justice Pleicones did not participate. We are holding our collective breath to learn the results of a Quicken Loan case pending in the original jurisdiction of the Court, and the present case may give us at least a small hint.

stay tunedWe have already received an underwriting question about this case in our office. We were asked whether our attorney agents can ignore the liens filed in contravention of this case. The answer is that we can discuss the specifics on a case-by-case basis, but it appears that although the liens may be invalidated by a court, dirt lawyers and title companies should not generally take this risk without the involvement of a court. If you run into this issue in connection with your closings, call your title insurance underwriter to discuss your options!

*Rogers Townsend & Thomas, PC v. Peck, South Carolina Supreme Court Opinion 27707 (February 22, 2017)

**309 S.C. 304, 422 S.E.2d 123 (1992)

***292 S.C. 286, 468 S.E.2d 290 (1987)

SC Dirt lawyers: check your documents

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SC Supreme Court issues opinion that may keep us up at night!

Are the words “developed” and “improved” used interchangeably in your form real estate documents?  You might want to pull your documents to check based on a recent South Carolina Supreme Court case.*

The Supreme Court affirmed a Court of Appeals decision finding property had not been developed into discrete lots entitling them to voting rights under a set of restrictive covenants. While the two courts agreed on that determinative point, the Supreme Court felt the need to clarify the Court of Appeals’ opinion that may be read to “conflate” the terms “developed” and “improved”. (The only word that was unclear to me was “conflate”, which I now know means to combine two or more concepts into one.)

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The Supreme Court cited a 2007 Washington state opinion for the definition of “developed”: conversion of raw land into an area suiting for building, residential or business purposes. Improving land is subject to a higher threshold, according to the Court, and would require such actions as installing utilities or buildings.

Chief Justice Pleicones and Justice Few concurred, and the Chief wrote a separate opinion for the sole purpose of expressing concern that dictating the meanings of the terms “developed” and “improved” may inadvertently alter the meaning of documents or create a conflict with legislative enactments. He used a subsection of a statute dealing with mechanics’ liens as an example.

South Carolina Code Section 29-6-10 (2) contains the following definition of “Improve”:

 “Improve means to build, effect, alter, repair, or demolish any improvement upon, connected with, or on or beneath the surface of any real property, or to excavate, clear, grade, fill or landscape any real property, or to construct driveways and roadways, or to furnish materials, including trees and shrubbery, for any of these purposes, or to perform any labor upon these improvements, and also means and includes any design or other professional or skilled services furnished by architects, engineers, land surveyors and landscape architects.”

That definition is written as broadly as possible to protect the interests of any professional who provides labor or services in connection with developing, I mean improving, real estate.

The underlying Court of Appeals opinion** indicated that platting separate lots on paper without further steps did not rise to the level of the term “develop”, which, according to the Supreme Court, is a lower threshold than the term “improve”, which, according to the statute, includes platting. Do you see the Chief’s concern? I certainly do! Good luck with those documents!

*Hanold v. Watson’s Orchard Property Owners Association, Inc, South Carolina Supreme Court Opinion 27702 (February 15, 2017)

**Hanold v. Watson’s Orchard Property Owner’s Association, 412 S.C. 387, 772 S.E.2d 528 (2016)

SC residential tax breaks are “two ships in the night”

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“Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness”  – Longfellow

Tax cases can be complicated, but this one seems relatively simple. The South Carolina Court of Appeals held in late December that the homestead exemption and the primary residence (4%) classification are two entirely separate matters*.

The taxpayer, Frank Mead, turned sixty-five in 2004 and received the homestead exemption from 2005 to 2010 on his home located in beautiful Hilton Head Island. In 2011, he had a brilliant idea and rented his home for 138 days during which he traveled part of the time and stayed in a rental apartment the remainder of the time.

The Beaufort County Tax Assessor didn’t approve of Mr. Mead’s brilliant idea. She revoked the homestead exemption for 2011 on the theory that he no longer qualified because he rented his home for more than fourteen days.  Mr. Mead believed the fourteen-day limitation applied only to the primary residence (4%) classification and appealed to the Beaufort County Tax Equalization Board.

He lost in that forum but then appealed to the Administrative Law Court. The ALC found for Mr. Mead and determined that the homestead exemption and the primary residence classification are “two ships in the night” with different requirements. The Tax Assessor appealed to the Court of Appeals.  The issue was whether the homestead exemption under §12-37-250 of the South Carolina Code is available only to property that also qualifies for the preferential residential assessment ration set out in §12-43-220(c).

Section 12-37-250 provides for a homestead exemption for a person sixty-five or older when that person has been a resident of South Carolina for at least one year. Section 12-43-220(c) provides for a special property tax assessment ratio of 4% (as opposed to the normal 6%) for owner occupied legal residences.

To make the matter a little more complicated, but more advantageous to the taxpayer, the assessment ratio statute further provides that the owner-occupant of a legal residence is not disqualified from receiving the 4% classification if the requirements of Internal Revenue Code §280A(f)[2] as defined in section 12-6-40 (A), meaning the property may be rented for less than fifteen days.

The Court of Appeals noted that nothing in the homestead exemption statute makes reference to the primary residence classification statute and that the 14-day rule applies only to the four percent assessment ratio. Simple, right? Not quite so simple: interestingly, the Department of Revenue had taken the same position in a 1997 memorandum that the Tax Assessor in this case took, but withdrew that memorandum two years later.

For now, the rules are separate and distinct, and the taxpayer wins!

BBC reports on South Carolina “heirs’ property” saga

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A December 5 article in BBC News Magazine entitled “Gullah Geechee: Descendants of slaves fight for their land”, outlines the struggles of property owners in Jackson Village to save their homes.

Jackson Village is one of three black communities in Plantersville, an unincorporated area of Georgetown County located about six miles north of the Town of Georgetown on Highway 701. The area is described as consisting of neat brick bungalows, set back form the road and protected from Highway 701 by a dense forest.

The BBC article, written by Brian Wheeler, describes 20 homes in Jackson Village being put up for auction because of the failure to pay taxes on a new sewer system. Local authorities apparently required residents to pay for hooking up to the new system because septic tanks were contaminating drinking water and becoming a health hazard. The residents complain that they were forced to pay even if their septic tanks were working well. The cost for each resident is $250 per year for the next 20 years.

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Photo courtesy of BBC.com

The land is heirs’ property, land that has been passed down through the generations, usually without the benefit of deeds or probated estates. Many heirs’ property owners can trace their roots back to West African slaves who gained property rights during Reconstruction. These owners often allowed their properties to pass through the generations without formalities because they were denied access to the legal system, or because they didn’t understand it or trust it or could not afford it.

Where generations of landowners own property as tenants in common, maintaining ownership can become a risky proposition. All of the heirs own the property, whether or not they ever set foot on it.  Living on the land and paying taxes on it is certainly not a prerequisite.

Many of these properties are in or near valuable coastal areas where developers are eager to gain access.  A developer can buy the interest of one tenant in common to gain the same rights as the tax-paying residents. But distant family members looking for money can also create havoc. Partition actions are instituted, legal fees are incurred, and the result may be that the property is sold quickly and for less than fair market value.

Photo courtesy of Chicago Tribune

Thankfully, our legislature has recognized and addressed this problem. On September 22, Governor Haley signed legislation that honored the memory of Senator Clementa C. Pinkney, a victim of the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church mass shooting in Charleston on June 17, 2015. The new law is now known as the Clementa C. Pinckney Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act, and it will become effective January 1, 2017.

The new law requires independent appraisals and open-market sales to ensure heirs receive fair prices. The new act would not prevent sales for the failure to pay taxes as described in the BBC article, but it should make sales begun by developers and distant heirs more impartial and advantageous for all property owners.

Just in Time for Halloween, SC Supreme Court Declines Frightening Request to Compel Random Lawyer Trust Account Audits

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The South Carolina Supreme Court amended the rules that govern lawyer discipline on October 25.* The big news here is not the very minor amendments that were adopted but rather the major requested amendments the Court declined to adopt.

The Commission on Lawyer Conduct and the Commission on Judicial Conduct proposed a rule amendment that would have imposed mandatory random audits of lawyer trust accounts. Without comment, the Court declined to adopt this rule change after “careful consideration”.

The Court also declined without comment an amendment that would have required a new position, a presiding disciplinary judge to act as a hearing officer to preside over disciplinary and incapacity hearings.

I have no idea why the Court made these decisions, but my guess is that the motivation revolved around the additional funds that these proposals would have required.

*Appellate Case No. 2015-0002336

Court of Appeals Revises Opinion, but not Result, in Arbitration Case

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It seems the arbitration cases are all over the place in 2016. We’ve discussed three cases so far this year*, and the opinion in one of these cases has been withdrawn, substituted and refiled**, but the result did not change.

The South Carolina Court of Appeals decided to make a few changes in its opinion in One Belle Hall. The earlier opinion, filed June 1, held that an arbitration clause in a roofing supplier’s warranty provision was not unconscionable. The trial court had ruled that the supplier’s sale of shingles was based on a contract of adhesion and that the injured property owners lacked any meaningful choice in negotiating the warranty and arbitration terms, which were contained in the packaging for the shingles.

The Court of Appeals indicated that the underlying sale was a typical modern transaction for goods in which the buyer never has direct contact with the manufacturer to negotiate terms. The Court found it significant that the packaging contained the notation: “Important: Read Carefully before Opening” providing that if the purchaser is not satisfied with the terms of the warranty, then all unopened boxes should be returned. The Court pointed to the standard warranty in the marketplace that gives buyers the choice of keeping the goods or rejecting them by returning them for a refund, and blessed the arbitration provision.

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In the later opinion, filed September 28, the Court of Appeals addressed the South Carolina Supreme Court’s July 6, 2016 opinion in Smith v. D.R. Horton (cited in the footnote, below). In D.R. Horton, which this blog discussed on July, 14 the Supreme Court held that a national residential company’s contract contained a number of “oppressive and one-sided provisions”, including an attempted waiver of the implied warranty of habitability and a prohibition of awarding money damages of any kind. The Supreme Court held that the home purchasers lacked a meaningful ability to negotiate their contract, the only remedy through which appeared to be repair and replacement.

The difference in the two cases appears to be the location of the offending provisions. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that an arbitration agreement is separable from the contract in which it is embedded, and the issue of its validity is distinct from the substantive validity of the contract as a whole.*** The arbitration provision in D.R. Horton was construed in its entirety because various subparagraphs addressed warranty information and contained cross-references to each other. In addition, the contract did not contain a severability clause.

In the second opinion in One Belle Hall, the Court of Appeals admitted, as the supplier had conceded, that the agreement at issue was a contract of adhesion, but noted that our Supreme Court has stated that adhesion contracts are not per se unconscionable. The Court recognized that the roofing supplier’s contract continuously used language to the effect that any attempted disclaimer or limitation did not apply to purchasers in jurisdictions that disallowed them. The Court also found it significant that the agreement contained a severability clause.

In other words, since the objectionable provisions of the contract were outside the arbitration provision, and the arbitration provision is severable from the objectionable provisions, the arbitration clause is enforceable. The Court repeated its earlier point that the arbitration provision facilitates an unbiased decision by a neutral decision maker in the event of a dispute.

I believe we will see more of these cases, and I caution lawyers to be extremely careful in their drafting endeavors.

 

*  One Belle Hall Property Association v. Trammel Crow Residential Company, S.C. Ct. App. Opinion 5407 (June 1, 2016); Smith v. D.R. Horton, Inc., S.C. Supreme Court Opinion 27642 (July 6, 2016); and Parsons v. John Wieland Homes, S.C. Supreme Court Opinion 27655 (August 17, 2016).

**  One Belle Hall Property Association v. Trammel Crow Residential Company, S.C. Ct. App. Opinion 5407 (September 28, 2016)

***  Prima Paint Corporation v. Flood Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 395 (1967)

Could Efforts to Modernize Mortgage Practice Lead to Changes in SC Law?

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Reuters reports on a “patchwork of state laws” that hinder efforts.

In an article dated September 9, Reuters reports that the practice of notarizing documents, which dates back “at least to Ancient Rome” is becoming “passé” in the era of FaceTime, Skype and live-streamed social media. South Carolina real estate lawyers might want to take deep breaths and read the article, which is linked here. 

South Carolina practitioners are banking on State v. Buyers Service, our seminal case from 1987 holding that closings are the practice of law, to keep us in the closing business. Buyers Service is still good law in South Carolina and has been cited favorably many times and as late as this year.

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There have been some hints, however, in our long line of “UPL” cases that some of our current Supreme Court Justices may not be as committed to our strong rule as some of the prior Justices have been. (I hope that comment was vague enough to keep me out of trouble if I encounter any of the current or former Justices at a cocktail party. Please notice citations are purposefully missing.)

The South Carolina Supreme Court has repeated in almost every case on point that the purpose of requiring lawyers to be involved in closings is to protect consumers. The Reuters article suggests that the effort to modernize mortgages would also protect consumers. One borrower in the story, a civilian paramedic at a military base in Kuwait, was forced to fly 6,500 miles to buy a house in Virginia. Webcam notaries would cut expenses for lenders, notaries and borrowers, the article suggests.

Are the two efforts to protect consumers diametrically opposed? No doubt, South Carolina lawyers could be on one end of the webcams. I encourage all of us to read the news and to pay attention to how closings happen in other parts of the country and to continually think of ways to modernize our practices.  Keeping up with technology can only contribute toward keeping a real estate practitioner in the closing game.

Don’t Amend Your Master Deed As A Litigation Strategy

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The South Carolina Court of Appeals was not impressed!

The owners of The Gates at Williams-Brice (a great place to tailgate!) were surprised in 2012 when a maintenance company refused to bid on an exterior caulking/sealant job because of perceived construction defects.  Almost immediately, the owners’ association and an individual owner filed a complaint alleging negligence, gross negligence, breach of warranty and strict liability claims. The defendants were numerous developer and contractor entities.

The plaintiffs demanded a jury trial and sought to establish a class action for the condominium owners. The developer filed a motion for a nonjury trial and to strike the class action allegations. The Circuit Court ruled for the plaintiffs, and the defendants appealed. The Court of Appeals, in an Opinion dated August 31*, reversed.

The case contains several practice pointers for dirt lawyers, especially those who draft master deeds and amendments to master deeds and those who represent owners’ associations.

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The Master Deed establishing The Gates at Williams-Brice contained provisions requiring arbitration, waiving the right to a jury trial, waiving the right to a class action, and eliminating the right to secondary, incidental or consequential damages.

The original complaint was filed in December of 2012. An answer, opposing the certification of a class, was filed in May of 2013. Later that month, the complaint was amended to add defendants. And on May 23, the homeowners amended the Master Deed to remove the provisions that thwarted their litigation efforts.

The Circuit Court found that the provisions at issue were no longer within the Master Deed and that the defendants were precluded from enforcing unconscionable arbitration and alternative dispute resolutions that contained oppressive, one-sided terms.

On appeal, the defendants argued that the Master Deed could not be amended retroactively to remove the provisions at issue. Neither party contested that the homeowners’ actions were taken in anticipation of litigation. The Court of Appeals held that the homeowners knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently waived their rights to a jury trial and to a class action when they signed their deeds.

Citing a North Carolina case**, the Court of Appeals said that to remove the agreed-upon waivers retroactively would effectively substitute a new obligation for the original bargain of the parties. The Court pointed to the cites in the North Carolina case that indicate several jurisdictions apply a reasonableness standard when reviewing amendments to covenants and holding a provision authorizing an owners’ association to amend covenants does not permit amendments of unlimited scope; rather, every amendment must be reasonable in light of the contracting parties’ original intent.

The Court of Appeals discounted several cases involving amendments in condominium projects by the Circuit Court as not controlling. One such case found the developer’s amendment to increase maintenance assessments was enforceable against new purchasers. Another case approved an amendment regarding leasing restrictions. A third case found that an owners’ association properly amended covenants to prohibit the developer from advertising on the property. The final case held that an amendment authorizing the association to suspend utilities for unpaid judgments was properly applied against a unit owner because any alleged retroactivity was proper based on the contractual relationship between the association and the unit owner.

Other cases cited by the Circuit Court were dismissed as neither dealing with amendments to condominium declarations nor to master deeds.

The Court stated that it was unaware of any authority in South Carolina that would permit contracting parties to unilaterally alter agreed upon provisions once litigation has started.

The developer also argued that the amendments were ineffective because they failed to obtain the required permission of lenders and other “bound parties” such as the developer. The Court declined to address that issue because of its other conclusions.

What will the Supreme Court say if it gets the opportunity to rule on this issue?

 

*The Gates at Williams-Brice Condominium Association v. DDC Construction, Inc., S.C. Court of Appeals Opinion 5438 (August 31, 2016)

**Armstrong v. Ledges Homeowners Ass’n, Inc., 633 S.E.2d 78 (N.C. 2006)

A Certain Path to Disbarment:

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Fake a title insurance agency and ignore a real estate practice!

In the Matter of Samaha* is a South Carolina Supreme Court attorney disciplinary case that resulted in disbarment.

This lawyer was creative; you have to give him that!

For starters, he witnessed and notarized the signature of his client’s late wife, who had died seven years earlier. He typed, witnessed and notarized a revocation of a durable power of attorney for an 83 year old retired paralegal with cognitive and physical limitations.

Perhaps the most interesting violations, however, had to do with the title insurance. (What? It’s tough to make title insurance interesting. Trust me. I try and fail on a daily basis. This stuff is only interesting to title nerds like me!)

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A relationship with a title insurance company is essential to a real estate practice in South Carolina. The closing attorney must either be in a position to issue his own title insurance commitments and policies as an agent, or to certify to a title insurance company as an approved attorney to obtain those documents.

Consider the activities of  Mr. Breckenridge, the lawyer who was publicly reprimanded this spring for allowing non-attorney entities to control his real estate practice.** During oral arguments, he stated that he preferred to handle closings in the customary manner in South Carolina, where the attorney acts as agent for a title insurance company as well as closing attorney. But he had been suspended by the Supreme Court for a short time and, as a result, had been canceled as an agent by his title insurance company. He said he was then forced to work for an entity that hires lawyers to attend closings only.  When a problem arose with the disbursement of one of those closings, he found himself in front of the Supreme Court again.

Mr. Samaha had also been canceled by his title insurance companies. That did not stop him and his staff from proceeding full steam ahead with closings in the customary manner.  Although he originally denied any knowledge that documents had been forged in his office, he ultimately admitted that closing protection letters had been forged and issued to lenders.

A mortgage lender later uncovered not only forged closing protection letters, but also forged title insurance commitments and policies. It was not possible for Mr. Samaha to obtain any of these documents legitimately during this timeframe, because his status had been canceled as an approved attorney as well as an agent. The Court commented that, absent the forgeries of these documents, the lawyer’s real estate practice could not have functioned.

(This is not the first disbarred lawyer in South Carolina to have included the forgery of title insurance documents in his repertoire of misdeeds.***)

The Court stated that Mr. Samaha allowed his staff to, in effect, run his office. He failed to supervise them and failed to supervise and review closing documents.  He, in effect, completely ignored his real estate practice.


He also committed professional violations of a more mundane but equally scary nature. For example, he made false and misleading statements on the application for his professional liability insurance.

red card - suitHe failed to pay off four mortgages. By his own calculations, the loss was more than $200,000, but the Office of Disciplinary Counsel stated that his financial records and computers had been destroyed, making it impossible to prove the true extent of the financial mismanagement and misappropriation.  Apparently, the money from new closings was used to fund prior closings, up until the date of Mr. Samaha’s suspension from the practice of law.

 

*In the Matter of Samaha, South Carolina Supreme Court Opinion 27660 (August 24, 2016)

** In the Matter of Breckenridge, South Carolina Supreme Court Opinion 27625 (April 20, 2016)

*** In the Matter of Davis, 411 S.C. 209, 768 S.E.2d 206 (2015)

Another South Carolina Arbitration Case

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Following these cases is like watching a tennis match!

This is the third blog on this topic this summer! The June 7 blog surrounded a South Carolina Court of Appeals case* that held an arbitration clause in a roofing supplier’s warranty provision was not unconscionable. The lower court had ruled that the supplier’s sale of shingles was based on a contract of adhesion and that the injured property owners lacked any meaningful choice in negotiating the warranty and arbitration terms, which were actually contained in the packaging for the shingles.

The Court of Appeals indicated that the underlying sale was a typical modern transaction for goods in which the buyer never has direct contact with the manufacturer to negotiate terms. The Court found it significant that the packaging for the shingles contained a notation:  “Important: Read Carefully Before Opening” providing that if the purchaser is not satisfied with the terms of the warranty, then all unopened boxes should be returned. The Court pointed to the standard warranty in the marketplace that gives buyers the choice of keeping the goods or rejecting them by returning them for a refund, and blessed the arbitration provision.

SCORE:  15- Love in favor of arbitration

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Let’s Talk Dirt on July 14 addressed a South Carolina Supreme Court case that appeared to take the opposite approach. ** A national residential construction company’s contract contained a number of “oppressive and one-sided provisions”, including an attempted waiver of the implied warranty of habitability and a prohibition on awarding money damages of any kind. The Supreme Court held that the home purchasers lacked a meaningful ability to negotiate their contract, the only remedy through which appeared to be repair or replacement.

SCORE:  15-all.

Note that Justices Kittredge and Pleicones dissented, stating that the contract involves interstate commerce and, as a result, is subject to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), “a fact conspicuously absent in the majority opinion”. The dissent stated that federal law requires that unless the claim of unconscionability goes to the arbitration clause itself, the issue of enforceability must be resolved by the arbitrator, not by the courts. The majority construed the Warranties and Dispute Resolution provisions of the contract as comprising the arbitration agreement and thus circumvented controlling federal law, according to the dissent.

Since the property owners raised no challenges to the arbitration clause itself, the dissent would have required that the other challenges be resolved through arbitration.

In a case dated August 17***, the majority decision is written by Chief Justice Pleicones with Justice Kittredge concurring. (Do you see a pattern here?) This case involved a residential subdivision that had been built on property previously used as an industrial site. The developer had demolished and removed all visible evidence of the industrial site and removed underground pipes, valves and tanks.

The plaintiffs bought a “spec” home in the subdivision and later discovered on their property PVC pipes and a metal lined concrete box containing “black sludge”, which tested positive as a hazardous substance. The present lawsuit was brought, alleging the developer failed to disclose the property defects. The developer moved to compel arbitration.

Paragraph 21 of the purchase agreement stated that the purchaser had received and read a copy of the warranty and consented to its terms. The purchasers had been provided with a “Homeowner Handbook” containing the warranty.

The circuit court, which was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, found the arbitration clause was enforceable for two reasons:

  1. it was located within the warranty booklet, making its scope limited to claims under the warranty. The Supreme Court held that the plain and unambiguous language of the arbitration clause provides that all claims, including ones based in warranty, are subject to arbitration.
  2. The alleged outrageous tortious conduct of the developer in failing to disclose concealed contamination made the outrageous torts exception to arbitration enforcement applicable. The Supreme Court overruled all South Carolina cases that applied to outrageous torts exception, making that exception no longer viable in South Carolina.

The Supreme Court discussed the heavy presumption in favor of arbitration by the FAA and in the federal courts and the push to place arbitration agreements on equal footing with other contracts and enforce them in accordance with their terms.

SCORE:  30-15 in favor of arbitration

You won’t be surprised to learn that there was a dissent, this time by Acting Justice Toal, and a concurrence, by Justices Hearn and Beatty.

And remember that the CFPB recently announced a proposed rule that would ban financial companies from using mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses to deny consumers the right to join class action lawsuits.

SCORE:  30-all

All of these authorities affect matters involving dirt law. So the tennis match involving arbitration clauses in our area is still being played, and we will continue to watch!

*One Belle Hall Property Owners Association v. Trammell Crow Residential Company, S.C. Ct. App. Opinion 5407 (June 1, 2016)
** Smith v. D.R. Horton, Inc., S.C. Supreme Court Opinion 27643 (July 6, 2016)
*** Parsons v. John Wieland Homes, S.C. Supreme Court Opinion 27655 (August 17, 2016