HENDRIK W. VIETOR, APPELLANT,
v.
MARGARET A. SILL AND GEORGE M. GRANDALL, INC., A FLORIDA CORPORATION, APPELLEES

Fla. 4th DCA | 1971-01-27
No. 70-290
WALDEN and REED, JJ., concur.
243 So. 2d 198 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (1971) Positive Treatment
Cited by 6 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.

Synopsis

Vietor appeals the dismissal of his complaint seeking specific performance to force Sill to sell him her apartment under a preemptive rights agreement. The court reverses, holding that the preemptive rights clause was triggered by notice of Sill's intention to sell and her stated terms, regardless of whether she had formed a binding contract with a third-party purchaser.


Holding

The preemptive rights agreement requires only that a seller give written notice of her intention to sell, specifying the price, terms, and conditions, to activate the other owners' rights. No binding contract with a third party must be formed first. Once notice is given and another owner agrees to the stated terms and tenders performance, the seller becomes obligated to convey.


Headnotes

[1] A preemptive right to purchase an apartment, as defined in a contract, is triggered by the owner's written notice of intention to sell, including price, terms, and condit…

[2] An apartment owner's agreement to purchase on the terms and conditions stated in the seller's notice of intent to sell, coupled with a tender of performance, obligates th…

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Key Quotes

“There is no requirement of a binding contract between the apartment seller and a third party to activate the other apartment owners' preemptive rights under the agreement.”

Establishes the core holding that preemptive rights are triggered by notice of intention to sell, not by formation of a third-party binding contract.

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Facts & Procedural History

In 1945, apartment owners at Lakeview Apartments executed an agreement granting first refusal rights to remaining owners if any owner desired to sell.…

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Opinion of the Court
DOWNEY, JAMES, C., Associate Judge.

DOWNEY, JAMES, C., Associate Judge.

This is an appeal from an order of the trial court dismissing with prejudice plaintiff’s first amended complaint, and from an order on rehearing modifying said order of dismissal.

Appellees have not favored this court with a brief in support of the decision below.

Appellant, as plaintiff below, filed his complaint for injunction and specific performance to require defendant, Sill, to convey to him Apartment No. S of Lakeview Apartments in the City of Fort Lauder-dale. It is alleged in the complaint that in 1945 an agreement was executed by all of the apartment owners of the Lakeview Apartments, wherein they agreed, inter alia, that in the event one of them.desired to sell his apartment, he would give the remaining owners first refusal.

Defendant Sill was not of the original apartment owners, but when she bought her apartment in 1950, she and her deceased husband signed an agreement with all the other apartment owners acknowledging the requirements of the 1945 agreement and consenting to be bound thereby. Plaintiff also consented to be bound by said agreement at the time he purchased his apartment.

The complaint further alleges that in 1968 defendant Sill employed defendant, George M. Crandall, Inc., a real estate brokerage firm, to effect a sale of her apartment on certain terms and conditions. The *199broker having obtained a prospective purchaser on the authorized terms and conditions, together with a deposit receipt contract signed by him, notified all of the apartment owners in writing on November 28, 1968 of the proposed sale, with a copy of the deposit receipt contract attached. Upon receipt of said notice, on December 6, 1968, plaintiff’s attorney advised the broker in writing that plaintiff agreed to buy the apartment on the terms and conditions set forth and enclosed a check for the deposit, but defendant Sill refused to sell to plaintiff.

The trial court sustained a motion to dismiss the first amended complaint on the ground that a binding contract to sell must be entered into by an apartment seller and a prospective purchaser before anothei apartment owner may exercise his preemptive right to buy the apartment. Thus, the provisions of the contract would seem to control the decision here.

Paragraph 9(c) of the contract in question paraphrased says:

Should any of the parties hereto ever desire to sell or dispose of his interest, written notice of such intention shall be given to the other owners, notifying them of the price, terms and conditions of such proposed sale, and of the time within which it is to be consummated. The remaining owners, or any of them, may within such time, agree to purchase the interest so proposed to be sold, and in such event the owner of such interest shall he obligated, upon a tender of performance by the parties so agreeing, to convey all of his interest in the premises to the party who has so tendered performance. ^

There is no requirement of a binding contract between the apartment seller and a third party to activate the other apartment owners’ preemptive rights under the agreement. When the defendant notified the other owners of her “intention” to sell and the terms and conditions demanded, the other apartment owners then became entitled to buy on those terms. And when one of them agreed to the stated terms and conditions and tendered performance, the defendant became obligated to sell.

The first amended complaint clearly states a cause of action under said contract and it was error to grant the motion to dismiss.

Reversed.

WALDEN and REED, JJ., concur.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

  • Vorpe v. KEY Island, Inc., 374 So. 2d 1035 (Fla. 2d DCA 1979)
    …no longer any viable pending sale and, therefore, no basis for Key Island to purchase the property. However, once Vorpe, the lessor, manifested an intention to sell to a third party, Key Island’s right of first refusal was activated, Vietor v. Sill, 243 So. 2d 198 (Fla. 4th DCA 1971), and Vorpe’s conveyance to Vining conclusively established Key Island’s right to purchase the property on the terms which Vorpe had accepted from Vining. The fact that the sale was subsequently rescinded by judicial action had no…
  • Hendrik W. Vietor v. Sill, 272 So. 2d 173 (Fla. 4th DCA 1973)
    …PER CURIAM. The primary law of this case was established via interlocutory appeal in our opinion reported as Vietor v. Sill, Fla.App.1971, 243 So. 2d 198, when it was stated at page 199: “There is no requirement of a binding contract between the apartment seller [*174] and a third party to activate the other apartment owners’ preemptive rights under the agreement. When the defendant notified the oth…
  • Hendrik W. Vietor v. Sill, 306 So. 2d 564 (Fla. 4th DCA 1975)
    …respects to the extent not inconsistent herewith the final judgment is affirmed.3 Affirmed, in part; reversed, in part. OWEN, C. J., and CROSS and MA-GER, JJ., cor.cur. . Vietor v. Sill, Fla.App.1973, 272 So. 2d 173; Victor v. Sill, Fla.App.1971, 243 So. 2d 198. . In ascertaining the amount of any damages, computations shall begin on the date notice was received of plaintiff’s agreement to buy the subject property, December 6, 1968 through the date plaintiff received possession of the subject i>roperty. I…

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