No need to be an industry veteran like Isaac Toussie to know that real estate laws throughout the country will vary. This is part of what makes real estate law so very interesting, after all – as well as quite a challenge to stay on top of! Take Alabama for an example. There, property buyers cannot rescind their purchases even in cases of demonstrable seller fraud – when that property has been bought on a strictly “as-is” basis. That’s right: Alabama case law believes in the ancient law of caveat emptor even more than any other on the books!!

The Yellowhammer State takes the notion of “as-is” so literally that unless somehow superseded, the terms means exactly just that, even if the seller described the property with lies. That’s right, it’s really been upheld that misrepresentations are entirely legal under that basis.. Most anywhere else that’s just fraud and will probably lead to some jail time, but an Alabama court has ruled that as the as-is clause in the sales contract was not superseded by any other provision signed onto by both parties, the as-is clause will be taken literally!

That was an ambiguous situation in the eyes of Alabama law, but the law itself in Alabama is actually not quite as simplistically draconian as the quick snapshot of the case provided here would suggest. As if evidence of a peculiar regional preference for legal loopholes of all kinds, Alabama law will only hold such a strict view towards used property, not new ones. Another caveat to the caveat emptor ethos governing Alabama real estate is that misrepresentations that are not obvious but potentially harmful to health or safety will not be tolerated.

Alas for the plaintiff in Teer v. Johnston, however, while the misrepresentation was not something obvious it was not deemed harmful to health or safety, making nothing more than an inconvenience or nuisance at most. What the complainant ought to have done was stipulating in the contract or the deed that pre-sale disclosures hold despite the sale!