Delaware Business Lawyer Blog

As a Delaware personal injury lawyer, I talk with many clients who are interested in knowing whether they have a case after slipping and falling. A slip and fall injury case is not as simple as it might seem. This is the first in a series of articles explaining slip and fall cases in Delaware.

A 50-year-old woman went into a store on a rainy day. As she stepped off of a floor mat, her foot slid on the wet floor and she fell, resulting in a fractured hip. There weren’t any wet floor signs in the store. An employee had mopped the floor on the morning of the accident and, based on his inspections of the floor every half hour, he decided that the floor wasn’t wet enough to require additional mopping.

In Delaware, the law relating to these kinds of accidents is as follows:
When a business owner invites customers onto his property to conduct business, he has to exercise care to keep the property in a reasonably safe condition. He has to warn customers about any unreasonable risks which he knows about. Even if he doesn’t have actual knowledge of the risk, he has the same duty to warn if he should have known about it. One other requirement regarding the duty to warn - the risk has to be something that the customer would not be expected to discover for himself.

What do you think the result was? The Court agreed that the floor was damp or wet and slippery, and that this wetness caused this woman to fall. But this was not enough to show an unreasonably dangerousness condition or negligence on the part of the store owner. The Court explained that he was not required to use extraordinary care to keep the floor completely dry. Instead, his duty was to exercise reasonable care, and the Court believed that he did that by installing "walk off" mats in the entranceway to keep the floor dry by soaking up water from customers' shoes and by checking the floor every ½ hour on the day of the accident to see whether the floor was wet enough to require further mopping or the use of a sign.

The Court went on to explain that there wasn’t anything else the owner could have reasonably done to protect his customers from the tracked-in water. He couldn’t have stopped rainwater from being blown onto the floor by the wind or tracked in by other customers. The only way to have kept the floor completely dry is for him to have stationed an employee by the door all day for the sole purpose of mopping up each time a customer entered or left the store. A store owner is not required to do this.

The woman lost the case.

Slip and fall cases are not as easy as most people think. If you were injured in a slip and fall accident and have questions about your rights, call Delaware attorney Charles Snyderman for a free consultation.

As a Delaware real estate lawyer, I went to Court last week in a breach of contract lawsuit. I represented sellers who had entered into an agreement of sale to sell their home for $525,000.00. The buyers, who had paid a $15,000.00 deposit when they signed the contract, backed out of the deal and failed to show up for the closing.

The agreement of sale had the same language that’s in most contracts. If the buyers breach the contract, the sellers have the right to keep the buyers’ deposit as liquidated damages, or the sellers can sue the buyers for the actual damages which the sellers incur. My clients felt that they were going to suffer a huge loss because of the buyers’ breach, and so they decided to sue.

The trial resulted in an award of damages in favor of my clients in the amount of $71,699.00, which is a heck of a lot more than the $15,000.00 deposit. Here’s a brief explanation of how the Court came up with such a large award.

First of all, after the buyers backed out of the deal, my clients put the house back on the market. Unfortunately, the market value of houses began to drop, and when they finally found another buyer, the purchase price was $50,000.0 less than the first set of buyers had agreed to pay.

My clients were already living somewhere else when the buyers breached the contract. So in addition to the difference in sales price, we also proved that my clients had to pay a lot of expenses to keep up the house while they looked for another buyer. These expenses were for such things as a new roof, a hot water heater, trash removal, electricity, cable, water, taxes, insurance, ads for the sale of the house, etc.

Besides proving the economic loss, we also had to show the Court that the sellers tried to mitigate their damages. Mitigation of damages is a concept based on fairness. It basically means that when one party breaches a contract, the non-breaching party can’t sit back and let the losses accumulate endlessly and then try to collect them from the breaching party. Instead, the non-breaching party has a legal obligation to try to keep the losses as low as possible. As it’s explained by the Courts, “The mitigation of damages doctrine requires the plaintiff to take reasonable steps to minimize the consequences flowing from the breach.”

If you're selling or buying a home and have questions about your rights, you should consult with a Delaware real estate attorney.

If you’re selling your home in Delaware, you’re probably interested in knowing how much money you can expect to walk away with when you leave the settlement table. There’s a fairly easy way of estimating this number. The basic formula is:

Gross Amount Due to Seller
- Total Reduction Amount
Cash to Seller

How To Calculate the Gross Amount Due To Seller. Start with the Contract Sale Price. Add the Pro-Rations for taxes, sewer, and homeowner’s association dues.

How To Calculate the Total Reduction Amount. This amount is the sum of the seller’s settlement costs plus the amount needed to pay off the seller’s mortgage(s).

The Seller’s settlement costs usually consist of the following:
•commission to real estate agents for selling the home
•transfer taxes (1.5% of the sales price)
•courier fee for paying off the seller’s mortgage(s)

When you sell a home in Delaware, your sales contract contains the following language: “Taxes, special assessments, ground rent, water, sewer, electric and other lienable charges imposed by the State of Delaware, any political subdivision thereof, any school district, neighborhood association and/or condominium common expenses shall be apportioned pro-rata at the time of final settlement, as shall the rents and pre-paid operating expenses.”

The concept of pro-rations recognizes that there are certain bills that a seller may have paid before settlement, but the period covered extends beyond the date of settlement. When this happens, the seller has to be reimbursed for a portion of this period. Take the following example.

The New Castle County sewer bill is charged on an annual basis and covers the period January 1 to December 31. The sewer bill is usually paid in full by the end of February. Let’s assume that settlement takes place on September 1, 2010. The seller will have already paid the bill for the period January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010. Because the buyer becomes the owner on September 1, 2010, the contract requires the buyer to reimburse the seller for that portion of the year that the buyer is the owner (September 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010).

Now let’s look at the County and School taxes. The tax year begins July 1 and ends June 30. The deadline for paying the taxes is September 30. If settlement take place on September 1, 2010, the seller is responsible for the taxes for the period July 1, 2010 through August 31, 2010, and the buyer is responsible for the taxes from September 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011. The logistics for this can be a little confusing due to the fact that the seller has been escrowing for taxes with his mortgage company. If the seller’s mortgage company has already paid the taxes, then the seller will receive his reimbursement from the buyer at settlement for the period September 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011. If the seller’s mortgage company has not yet paid the taxes, then the taxes for the period July 1, 20201 through August 31, 2010 will be deducted from the seller’s proceeds at settlement, and the seller’s mortgage company will refund to the seller the entire balance in his escrow account.

If you’re selling your home in Delaware, speak to an experienced real estate lawyer so that you can become an informed and knowledgeable seller.

As a Delaware real estate lawyer, I've noticed that when sellers get to the settlement table, they are sometimes surprised because they weren't expecting the payoff to their mortgage company to be so high. They pull out their most recent statement, and they see that there's a difference between the amount shown on the statement and the amount on the HUD-1 settlement statement.

The reason for these 2 different figures is that the amount needed to pay off a mortgage is not the same as the principal balance on a mortgage. In the following example. let's assume that the settlement date is May 4, 2010. Let's also assume that the last mortgage payment made by the sellers was their payment that was due April 1, 2010. The statement that reflects the April payment having been made shows the principal balance that's owed before the May payment is due.

It's important to understand that whenever you make a mortgage payment, you're paying interest for the use of the lender's money for the previous month. When you made the April mortgage payment, the interest portion of that payment was for the period March 1, 2010 to March 31, 2010. If you made your May mortgage payment before you came to settlement, then the payoff would be the principal balance after the May payment, plus interest on that balance from May 1 to the day they receive the payoff. With a May 4 settlement date, you're probably looking at interest from May 1 to May 5.

However, if you didn't make your May mortgage payment before coming to settlement, the payoff would be the principal balance after you made the April payment, plus interest from April 1 to May 5. It's all this additional interest that explains the big difference between the balance on your statement and the amount needed to pay off the mortgage.

If you're thinking of selling your house, you may wish to consult with an experienced real estate lawyer before you put your house on the market.

Lawsuits against Toyota are springing up all around the country. The most well know cases are for injuries or death caused by sudden acceleration or problems with the brakes. But there are others kinds of lawsuits being filed against Toyota.

Many owners have gone to Court claiming that Toyota’s massive recalls have caused the value of their cars to drop. These owners say that Toyota knew about the safety problems and kept these problems hidden from buyers. In addition, shareholders of Toyota are suing because the value of their shares has plummeted.

Other lawsuits are being brought by Toyota owners who are afraid to drive dangerous cars and who claim that their insurance premiums are going to increase.

If you own a Toyota and want to know more about your rights, contact an experienced Delaware lawyer.

When you sell your home in Delaware, the law requires you to give a property condition report to all prospective buyers prior to the time the buyer makes an offer to purchase your home. This report is used to disclose all material defects of your property that are known at the time the property is put on the market and that are known prior to the time of final settlement.

One of the most common mistakes that are made in filling out this report is the failure to understand the difference between the words “no” and “unknown.” Here are 2 of the questions that have to be answered: Are there any zoning violations, non-conforming uses, or set-back violations? Are there any tax ditches crossing or bordering the property?

Your answer can be “yes,” “no” or “unknown.” Most sellers who answer these 2 questions select “no” as the answer. These sellers aren’t deliberately trying to mislead anyone, but they’ve never been given any reason to believe that these things exist on their property, and so they say “no.” But most people don’t know what a “set-back violation” is, or what a “tax ditch” is. If you don’t know what these things are, how can you say your property doesn’t have them? And yet, if you answer “no,” your buyer has the right to rely on your answer, and if it turns out later that these things actually do exist on your property, the buyer would have the right to sue you. Therefore, if you don’t know what these things are, the more correct answer would be “unknown.”

If you're thinking about selling your home as a "sale by owner," be sure to contact a knowledgeable and experienced real estate lawyer who can help you through the process.