Bowdeya Tweh

btweh@enquirer.com

Indian Hill man sues prospective homebuyer for walking away from real estate deal

Would-be buyers claims Sibcy Cline and home seller did not disclose vital property information

Issues in Hamilton County case reflect wide gulf in real estate disclosure rules

INDIAN HILL – The $1.2 million colonial on Pipewell Lane was everything the Pleatmans wanted: Five bedrooms, a big eat-in kitchen, a game room and pool for their family of eight.

Everything, that is, until they learned who lived next door: A man convicted of attempted murder in a notorious case from a decade ago.

Suddenly, the pending purchase turned into the home sale from hell.

When the Pleatmans balked at closing the deal, the seller sued for breach of contract. The Pleatmans countersued, accusing the seller and broker Sibcy Cline of conspiracy, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.

And in a bizarre move, the Pleatmans even hired a pilot last month to fly a "Shame on You Sibcy Cline" banner over the Western & Southern Open, one of the world's top-tier tennis tournaments, being played in Mason.

The story could be dismissed as a nasty million-dollar fight among well-to-do residents and the region's largest real estate broker. But it also raises cautions for anyone buying and selling a home:

What are sellers legally and ethically required to disclose to buyers about a neighborhood? While clear guidelines exist for disclosing a home's aging roof or prior water damage, the rules are vague for sharing details about the neighbors next door or a community at large.

The people involved in the Indian Hill case say they've already spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and related expenses – and a trial to resolve the matter is still 10 months away.

"No one wants to hire an attorney to buy a house but you might have to sometimes," Crysta Pleatman said.

The buyers: The Pleatmans

Jacqueline "Crysta" Pleatman is mad and wants the world to know it.

She said she and her husband Stephen have spent $60,000 in legal fees since they were sued in November. In the months since, Crysta, a stay-at-home mom and former iPhone app developer, has posted numerous messages on Facebook and Twitter slamming Sibcy Cline and promoting her case.

A hand-drawn sign with frowning faces against Sibcy Cline sits a few feet from her doorstep. She recently put fake spider webs and wrote "Stuck in a web of lies" with pink paint on her SUV.

"You can't go in and wreak havoc on someone's life and not expect them to fight back," she said.

Pleatman and her pediatrician husband waived a home inspection and signed a contract on Sept. 26, 2013, to buy the Pipewell Lane house from Grant Troja.

But before the scheduled closing, a future neighbor called Pleatman to tell her that Benjamin White had been released from prison and was living nearby.

On July 13, 2003, White, then 17, attacked 13-year-old Casey Hilmer off Given Road as she was jogging through the neighborhood. He dragged the teenager into nearby woods and stabbed her multiple times, resulting in life-threatening injuries, according to prosecutors.

The case attracted wide media attention, including from The Enquirer. A jury convicted him of assault and attempted murder, sending him to prison for 10 years.

White was released from prison in June 2013 and went to live with his parents Lance and Diane White, who live next door to the house the Pleatmans wanted to buy. In addition to five years probation, White had to wear an electronic monitoring device for six months.

"The whole street was really upset about this," Crysta Pleatman said. "They felt like their property values were being decreased."

Sibcy Cline, which represented both the buyers and the sellers, encouraged the Pleatmans to meet the Whites to allay their fears, Crysta Pleatman said. She and a teenage daughter visited the family at their home and met Ben. A few days later, Stephen Pleatman had a long sit-down talk with Ben.

Crysta said she asked questions, and Ben White answered them. "We did a lot of small talk," she said, adding she initially agreed after the meeting to continue with the sale.

"I said yes, out of purely feeling emotional and stress and not knowing how to handle the situation," Pleatman said, according to transcripts from a July deposition.

Eventually, the family decided against the purchase just days before closing. The Pipewell homes, which sit far back from street, are about 150 feet apart, and the property line is separated by thick brush and tall trees.

In December, the Pleatmans bought another home in Indian Hill on Camargo Pines for $1.225 million.

The seller: Grant Troja

Grant Troja was delighted when the Pleatmans signed a contract to buy his house, where he had lived since 1996. Troja bought the house with his now ex-wife Karen.

But since the deal soured, Troja has lost thousands of dollars, his lawyer Chuck Reynolds said. Troja has had to continue paying a mortgage and utility fees, in addition to the expense of returning items to the house that had been sent to storage, Reynolds said.

Troja, through his attorney, declined an interview with The Enquirer. But Reynolds said his client thought any misgivings about the purchase had been erased after the Pleatmans met with the Whites.

When the Pleatmans refused to complete the transaction, however, Troja sued them for breach of contract. The lawsuit, filed about a week after the closing had been missed, seeks monetary damages and an order that the Pleatmans complete the sale.

"Our real legal argument is she signed a contract that said she was responsible for doing all her own due diligence, that she had done her due diligence and no representations were made outside of the contract," Reynolds said.

Troja is president of Restaurant Management Inc., an Arby's franchisee with more than 60 locations around the country, about half of which are located in Greater Cincinnati.

Mariemont-based real estate company Comey & Shepherd is now listing Troja's Pipewell property for $1.295 million.

The neighbors: The Whites

Lance White said he was shocked to get a phone call last fall from Troja asking whether prospective homebuyers could meet his family. The Whites have lived in their home since 1985.

White said his son Ben understood the Pleatmans' concerns and didn't take it personally.

"Ben was in prison for 10 years," White said. "He did his time. He's mentally stable. He's as gentle as could be. But I understand people's perceptions, and I can't fault them. Ben got a lot of mental health help and is very stable and is a wonderful young man."

After the meetings, Lance White said Crysta Pleatman told him that her family looked forward to being neighbors. White said he learned the sale didn't go through from a neighbor who received a note in her mailbox from Pleatman, complaining that Sibcy Cline hadn't told her about Ben White.

"I felt really good about having them as neighbors until the letter surfaced," Lance White said. "It was a contractual matter, and there was no need to drag Ben back through the mud."

White said his son is fulfilling his obligations after his release from prison and has since moved out of his parents' home.

The real estate company: Sibcy Cline

Sycamore Township-based Sibcy Cline handled 10,694 property sales totaling nearly $2.2 billion in 2013. It's the region's largest residential real estate broker and is among the 50 largest independent real estate brokerages in the country.

In the Indian Hill case, Sibcy Cline represented both sides of the sale: agent Nat Comisar represented the Pleatmans, and agent Kelly Meyer represented Grant Troja. Comisar and Meyer did not respond to requests for comment.

Dual agency arrangements are not uncommon, and they're generally accepted as long as the relationship is disclosed to everyone to avoid questions about conflict of interest.

Crysta Pleatman calls Comisar an Indian Hill insider who's an expert on properties and knows everyone in the village. Her family has worked with Comisar, the former owner of Cincinnati's famed Maisonette restaurant, to sell two other Indian Hill properties in the past year.

The Pleatmans signed a purchase contract acknowledging the dual agency relationship. But Crysta alleges that Sibcy Cline officials instructed agents not to disclose information about Ben White's residence in the neighborhood to assure a sale would go through.

Pleatman said her late grandfather, well-known attorney John Wood II, taught her to always ask certain questions about whether there have been any murders, suicides or violent crimes in the home and neighborhood before signing a purchase contract. She said Sibcy Cline agents told her there were none.

Sibcy Cline denies Pleatman's claims. Reynolds also said he found no evidence that she asked Troja, Sibcy Cline or even her own agent about crime in the area.

"She thinks that there was some meeting in which everyone was told not to disclose anything about Ben White," he said. "We found no evidence on that meeting."

Jim Brockman, an attorney for Sibcy Cline, said the case remains in the discovery phase and is "proceeding down the litigation track." He declined further comment.

Comisar and Kelly have not had any complaints filed against them as real estate agents, according to the state's division of real estate and professional licensing. Two complaints were filed against Sibcy Cline in unrelated cases in 2007 and 2012; both were resolved.

The next step: Legal battle ahead

The parties are headed for a showdown in a trial that could begin next July. Nobody appears to be making plans to settle.

Attorneys deposed Crysta Pleatman earlier this year, getting her story under oath. Depositions for others are pending.

The Pleatmans are now represented by Paul Croushore, their sixth attorney on the case. Previous lawyers stopped representing the couple because of conflicts of interest or differing opinions on legal strategy. Croushore, new on the case this month, said he had more work to do before he could comment.

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jody Luebbers is presiding over the case. The next hearing is scheduled Oct. 3.

Crysta Pleatman said if Sibcy Cline and Troja would have allowed her to walk away from the purchase, she would have had no problem moving on, accepting the loss of the $10,000 in earnest money committed to the purchase. ■

What's the law?

Independent real estate experts and lawyers contacted by The Enquirer for this story wouldn't comment on specifics of the Pipewell Lane case.

But all agreed that rules for disclosing aspects of the neighborhood around a property for sale are open to wide interpretation. Realtors are trained to never lie, but nothing says they have to know every detail about a neighborhood or the neighbors. Agents are urged to exercise caution when disclosing any information outside of their real estate knowledge.

Bottom line: It's in the buyer's best interest to do his or her own neighborhood checks as thoroughly as possible.

"The law is very gray," said Chip Brigham III, president of Buckeye Land Title Co. in Delhi Township. Brigham has 30 years in the industry and is a respected expert in real estate law.

He said conditions outside a property's boundaries may well affect a person's decision to buy or walk away. They range from noise levels to area crime to the the location of sex offenders. "What a seller must disclose to a buyer about outside conditions like those contained in public records remains a gray area in the law," Brigham said.

In Ohio and other locales, rules on information disclosure in transactions are meant to keep sellers honest but not bog down the process of buying and selling real estate. And in the case of the physical condition of the property for sale, the rules are pretty clear.

Since July 1, 1993, the state of Ohio has required residential property owners to complete a disclosure form prior to all real estate transfers. It informs buyers about property conditions such as the water and sewer systems, structural components and whether hazardous materials have ever been present.

Lying about these details is a no-no, and ethics codes from the National Association of Realtors and its Cincinnati regional affiliates advise their members against doing it. If a buyer reasonably relies on the misinformation to his or her detriment, that could be grounds for legal action, according to Brigham.

Ohio law also requires a real estate agent to give first priority to protecting the client's financial and other interests. Agents are required to share material facts on the transaction with clients "in the exercise of reasonable skill and care." Agents are not required, however, to divulge confidential information they may have received in the course of another professional relationship.

Lorie Garland, assistant vice president of legal services for the Ohio Association of Realtors, said homeowners generally are not obligated to say anything about offsite conditions.

If the seller doesn't want certain information disclosed, the agent or broker then has an important decision to make. The agent could choose to disclose information anyway and potentially upset the client. The agent could choose not to disclose the information. Or, the agent could bring the information to the brokerage company and potentially walk away from the listing if it conflicts with company policy.

"The seller calls the shot on their listing," Garland said.

What about the neighbors?

A focus on the neighbors has been under increased scrutiny after a 7-year-old girl in New Jersey was raped and killed in 1994 by a convicted sex offender who lived in her neighborhood.

Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana are among states that subsequently enacted versions of "Megan's Law," which create community systems that notify law enforcement, day care operators and others when a sex offender moves into a neighborhood.

Because Internet databases identifying where sex offenders live are relatively easy to access, the onus of finding such information is on a potential homebuyer, Brigham said.

However, other public databases don't exist to identify where people who have been convicted of theft, assault or other crimes are living, Brigham said.

5 places to check first before buying

Buyers can learn a great deal about a neighborhood by checking public records. It may take a little digging to find the records for your particular location, but the effort will be worth it. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• For future roadwork, infrastructure or development projects: Check with your municipal, county or township building department.

• Schools: Check Ohio's 2013-14 academic report cards for public schools and school districts at http://bridge.caspio.net/dp.asp?AppKey=b2de00003d784d26fb094d4e8bfc

Kentucky school report card data can be found at http://education.ky.gov

• Neighborhood property information: Check county auditor's/assessor's office and websites. Information about Hamilton County properties, for example, can be found at http://www.hamiltoncountyauditor.org.

• Neighborhood crime: Check local police departments/sheriff's offices, neighborhood watch/homeowners associations. The Cincinnati Police Department provides reports on crime here: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/crime-statistics.

• Sex offenders nearby: Check county law enforcement websites. Also:

Ohio's database: http://www.icrimewatch.net/index.php?AgencyID=55149&disc=

In Kentucky: http://kspsor.state.ky.us