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31 May 2024

Trusts – Contracting with Trusts – Is a Majority Resolution Valid?

Many of us will either be involved in trusts as trustees or will contract with them as outsiders at one time or another – often in the context of a property transaction.

Beware! As a recent Supreme Court of Appeal decision starkly reminds us, trusts are strange creatures, and you need to tread carefully in dealing with them. We’ll look at questions of whether trustees must always act jointly and unanimously or whether it is enough for a majority of them to sign resolutions and documents. Our punchline is a strong warning note on what to look for when contracting with any trust.

“Externally, trustees cannot disagree. In the external sphere the Trust functions by virtue of its resolutions, which have to be supported by the full complement of the Trust body.” (Extract from judgment below)

A recent Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgment provides yet another reminder to tread carefully when contracting with trusts. Your agreements with a trust will be invalid and unenforceable if the trustees acting for the trust weren’t properly authorised to bind the trust.

But must trustee resolutions always be taken unanimously by all of the appointed trustees to be valid, or will a majority decision ever suffice? The SCA addressed that question in the context of a trust seeking to escape from a suretyship which had not been unanimously agreed to and signed by all three trustees acting jointly –

When a majority trustee decision isn’t enough

  • A creditor sued a property trust for payment under a suretyship given to it by the trust. The trust countered that the suretyship was invalid because the resolution authorising trustees to sign the suretyship was not authorised and signed by all three trustees, but only by two of them.
  • Indeed, only two of the trustees had attended the trustee meeting at which the suretyship was discussed. The third trustee had not been at the meeting and did not sign either the resolution authorising the suretyship to be signed or the actual suretyship.
  • The meeting itself was in order, in that the trust deed provided for two trustees to constitute a quorum for meetings. But the deed also provided that a unanimous decision was required for the trust “to conduct business on behalf of and for the benefit of the Trust, and to employ trust property in such business”.
  • In any event, as the Court put it: “…trustees must act jointly in taking decisions and resolutions for the benefit of the Trust and beneficiaries thereof, unless a specific majority clause provides otherwise” and “Even when the trust deed provides for a majority decision, the resolutions must be signed by all the trustees. (Emphasis added)
  • As it was neatly put in an earlier High Court decision: “A majority of trustees in office may form a quorum internally at a trust meeting, but can still not externally bind a trust by acting together … It is not the majority vote, but rather the resolution by the entire complement which binds a trust estate. A trust operates on resolutions and not votes.” (Emphasis added)
  • As only two of the three trustees had acted for the trust in this case, the Court held both the resolution and the suretyship to be invalid and unenforceable.

So, what does that mean for you in practice when contracting with a trust?

Internal trust matters: Internal matters (such as using trust income for the benefit of beneficiaries or administering trust assets) “may be debated and put to a vote, thereafter the voice of the majority will prevail.”

External trust matters: As an outsider however your dealings with the trust will relate to external trust matters (transactions relating to trust property with the outside world such as buying and selling property, signing suretyships and the like) and here unanimity is essential for the trust to be bound. Even when the trust deed allows majority decisions, all the trustees must still participate in the decision-making and all of them must sign a resolution to make it valid externally. Make sure therefore that all trustees signing for the trust have the power to do so per the trust deed and by a valid, unanimous resolution.

31 May 2024

Mandates – Why an Oral Estate Agency Mandate Isn’t Worth the Paper It’s Written On

As Samuel Goldwyn humorously put it: “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
To illustrate, we analyse a recent High Court fight over an agent’s claim to have been given a verbal mandate to find a development property for a buyer. The agent was found to have fulfilled her mandate, and the Court awarded her commission even though the sale agreement had been cancelled before transfer. The developer is left with a R450k (plus costs) bill, and no property to show for it. How and why did the agent win her case?
“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on” (Samuel Goldwyn)
Perhaps you are a seller marketing your property through an estate agency, or a buyer asking an agent to find you one, or a landlord employing an agent to let out your property. Whatever the transaction involved, make sure that the agency mandate is in writing.
The problem is that, because we have a human tendency to hear only what we want to hear, the parties to any verbal agreement can, quite genuinely, each remember the terms of their agreement quite differently. Even worse, if one party is determined to cheat the other, it’s a lot easier to challenge a verbal agreement than a written one.
Bottom line – oral contracts invite misunderstanding, conflict and protracted litigation, and for that very reason few agents will accept a mandate without requiring your signature on a written agreement.
But not always – let’s consider a recent High Court fight over a R450,000 commission claim.

Buyer must pay R450k for a cancelled sale

 

  • A property developer had previously employed an estate agent to source development property for it. No written mandate was ever signed.
  • The agent, relying on what she said was a verbal mandate to find a further development property, introduced the developer to a property which it decided to buy. An agreement of sale, including a clause confirming that the agent was entitled to R450,000 in commission, was signed by both buyer and seller. The agent had thus fulfilled her mandate and was the effective cause of the sale, the developer being willing and able to buy the property. In the ordinary course the agent would then have been entitled to her commission on fulfillment of all suspensive conditions (“conditions precedent”).
  • However, when the developer cancelled the sale, it refused to pay the agent her commission, denying firstly that any mandate had been given, and secondly arguing that in any event commission was only payable against actual transfer of the property from the seller to the buyer.
  • Long story short, the Court dismissed the developer’s attempts to convince it that there was no mandate at all, or that the suspensive conditions had not been fulfilled, or that the mandate included either an implied or a “tacit” term to the effect that commission would only be payable against transfer.
  • The developer was ordered to pay the agent’s commission and is left R450k (and legal costs) down, with absolutely nothing to show for it.
The lessons…
That is of course not only an expensive lesson for the developer, it’s also a clear wake-up call to anyone and everyone entering into a property deal of any sort with the involvement of an estate agent to ensure that you –
  1. Sign a written, clear mandateBoth parties could have saved themselves all the aggravation, delay and cost of litigation had they only entered into a written mandate agreement with clear, simple terms accurately recording the terms and conditions they had agreed upon.

    As we said above, most agencies insist on written mandates anyway, but make sure you aren’t the exception!

  2. Specify that commission is payable against transferMost sale agreements will provide that commission is earned on performance of the agent’s mandate and fulfilment of any suspensive or resolutive conditions (bond clauses and the like).

    But when is the commission actually payable to the agency? As it is normally deducted from the buyer’s deposit held in trust, both seller and buyer should check that it will not be paid out before transfer (or, in the event of a breach or cancellation of the sale, on that date). And whilst most standard mandates and sale agreements will provide exactly that, you must check because every agreement will be different. If there is a clause allowing payment of commission before transfer, don’t accept it without specific legal advice.

    From an agent’s perspective, further clauses are of course essential to protect your commission payment in the event that the sale is frustrated or doesn’t proceed – normally the agreement is that a defaulting party (buyer or seller) is liable to pay the full commission on default.

Most importantly of all, sign nothing property-related without asking us to check it over for you first!
07 May 2024

Rising Damp and Failed Waterproofing: How to Sue the Sellers

All sellers and buyers should understand both what constitutes a “defect” in a house for sale, and the extent and limits of a seller’s duty to disclose defects to prospective buyers.

A recent High Court award of damages, to a buyer who only became aware of substantial damp problems in the house after taking transfer, discusses the effect of a standard “voetstoots” clause on a buyer’s claim for redress. What did the buyer have to prove? How did the mandatory “property condition report” impact on the seller’s liability? We’ll look at how the Court addressed those questions …

“[w]here a seller recklessly tells a half-truth or knows the facts but does not reveal them because he or she has not bothered to consider their significance, this may also amount to fraud” … “a willful abstention from establishing the true facts does not constitute a lack of knowledge” (Extracts from the judgment below)

Consider this all-too-common scenario: You buy your dream house and happily move in. Only then do you discover that the house has major defects, which were never disclosed to you by the seller. You demand the seller pays the repair costs but the seller refuses. So off to court you go, claiming either damages or a reduction in the purchase price.

What must you prove to win your case? Let’s consider a recent High Court decision addressing just that question.

Concealing the damp with paint and Polyfilla

  • The buyer of a house only became aware of substantial damp problems in the ceilings and walls after taking transfer and when planning renovations. The damp was caused both by rising damp, and by water flowing down into the walls due to failed waterproofing.
  • The sellers (a divorced couple) refused to pay for the repairs (costing just under R245k) and the buyer sued them for either damages or a reduction in the purchase price.
  • Highly relevant – as we shall see below – was the fact that twice in the year of sale the ex-wife (living alone in the house and tasked with selling it after the divorce) had called in contractors to repaint and carry out “cosmetic repairs” – extensive repairs judging by the drum of paint and 24kg of Polyfilla involved.

What the buyer must prove

The matter ended up in the High Court, which considered what the buyer must prove to succeed in a claim of this nature. –

  • Defects: That there were defects in the property at the time of the sale which “affected the use and value of the property”. The buyer had no difficulty in proving that the damp problems qualified as defects for this purpose.
  • Latent, not patent: That the damp was a latent defect, not “obvious or patent” to the buyer. That’s important because latent defects are defects that “would not have been visible or discoverable upon inspection by the ordinary purchaser” – so if the damp was a “patent” defect, the buyer should have picked it up. The buyer in this case was able to convince the Court that the damp was not discoverable by her at the time of sale because all traces of it had been concealed by the remedial work referred to above.
  • Fraud: That the damp as a latent defect was not covered by the voetstoots clause, a standard clause in deeds of sale which specifies that the property is sold “as is” and without any warranty. The effect of such a clause is that the buyer agrees to carry the risk of latent defects, but only if there was no fraud on the part of the seller. So the buyer had to establish fraud, by proving two things — That the sellers were aware of the damp and its consequences.

    – That they deliberately concealed it with the intention to defraud.

Proving fraud – how relevant is the “property condition report”?

Fraud, said the Court, “is not lightly imputed [but] it may nevertheless be inferred when such inference is supported by the objective facts revealed by the evidence.” The following factors were central to the Court’s conclusion that both sellers had acted with fraudulent intent –

  • The sellers’ protestations that either they were unaware of the damp problems or had not intended to fraudulently conceal them found no favour with the Court on the facts – which included the extent and nature of the re-painting carried out.
  • The ex-wife’s claim to have been ignorant of the damp issues, despite the extent and nature of the “cosmetic repairs” she carried out, was rejected. As the Court put it: “At best for her, she remained willfully ignorant of the underlying cause of the issues in the paintwork; she could not honestly have believed that the core issue had been remediated.”
  • The ex-husband for his part admitted that he had known of damp issues in two rooms because of bubbling paint and a smell of damp, with the Court concluding that: “He appears to have taken no steps to ascertain how extensive or serious those problems were – but a willful abstention from establishing the true facts does not constitute a lack of knowledge.”
  • Perhaps most damningly of all, both the ex-husband and the ex-wife had signed the mandatory Property Condition Report (“defects disclosure form”), in which they specifically stated that there were no latent defects in the property, including “dampness in walls/ floors”.

The Court held that the buyer had proved fraud by both sellers and confirmed her award of R244,855 in damages for the repairs.

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