Colton MacPherson v. Carolina Pena and Suzanne Anderson Properties LLC

CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 15, 2022
Docket09-20-00221-CV
StatusPublished

This text of Colton MacPherson v. Carolina Pena and Suzanne Anderson Properties LLC (Colton MacPherson v. Carolina Pena and Suzanne Anderson Properties LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Colton MacPherson v. Carolina Pena and Suzanne Anderson Properties LLC, (Tex. Ct. App. 2022).

Opinion

In The

Court of Appeals

Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont

__________________

NO. 09-20-00221-CV __________________

COLTON MACPHERSON, Appellant

V.

CAROLINA PENA AND SUZANNE ANDERSON PROPERTIES LLC, Appellees

__________________________________________________________________

On Appeal from the 284th District Court Montgomery County, Texas Trial Cause No. 20-09-11021-CV __________________________________________________________________

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Colton MacPherson appeals a series of summary judgments

involving his purchase of a home granted in favor of Carolina Pena and

Suzanne Anderson Properties LLC (Anderson Properties), the seller’s

real estate agent and the broker through which the agent worked.

1 MacPherson bought the home from Leila Shahin Aglony, and his claims

against her went to trial. 1

Pena, a registered real estate agent with Anderson Properties,

represented Aglony in the transaction. The transaction involved

MacPherson’s decision to purchase a home Aglony bought in a foreclosure

sale in Montgomery County, which she then had remodeled by contractor.

After her contractors remodeled the home, she sold to MacPherson for

$140,000. In one issue, MacPherson contends the trial court erred in

granting Pena’s and Anderson Properties’ combined traditional and no-

evidence motions for summary judgment because: (1) the “as is” clause in

his real estate contract with Aglony did not negate causation; (2) his pre-

purchase inspection of the home did not negate his reliance on the

representations that Aglony, as the seller, made about the house; (3)

proof that Pena and Anderson Properties intended to defraud him or had

1Macpherson sued Aglony in the same suit, but after the trial court granted Pena’s and Anderson Properties’ motions for summary judgment, the trial court severed the case involving them into a separate cause. The case against Aglony was then tried to the bench, but the trial court in the bench trial rendered a take-nothing judgment against Macpherson on those claims. In September 2022, the Ninth Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment as the Macpherson’s case against Aglony. MacPherson v. Aglony, No. 09-21-00004-CV, 2022 Tex. App. LEXIS 7105, at *1 (Tex. App.—Beaumont Sept. 22, 2022, no pet. h.). 2 knowledge of Aglony’s false representations made by Aglony in her

disclosures about the home are not elements required to prove statutory

fraud or a claim under the DTPA; (4) the summary-judgment evidence

includes proof sufficient to raise issues of material fact on causation and

reliance; and (5) the summary-judgment evidence supports each of the

elements of his claims. We conclude MacPherson didn’t present evidence

raising an issue of material fact on at least one of the essential elements

of each of his claims. We will affirm the trial court’s ruling granting

Pena’s and Anderson Properties’ no-evidence motion.

Factual and Procedural Background

The factual background provided below is based largely on

depositions the parties included in the summary-judgment evidence. The

evidence shows that Aglony buys, renovates, and sells houses. Carolina

Pena, a registered real estate agent with Anderson Properties, testified

that she has represented Aglony in around eighteen transactions.

As to the home at issue in this suit, Aglony inspected the home

before she bought it in a foreclosure sale in March 2017. When she bought

the home, Aglony acknowledged knowing the home needed repairs before

it could be listed for sale. That said, Aglony also testified she couldn’t

3 recall whether, in the inspection she conducted before buying the home,

she noticed there were any problems with the walls or floors. Even so, a

photograph from a website maintained by agents who are members of the

Houston Association of Realtors, which was taken before Aglony bought

the home, shows a crack in the living room running across the floor.

Except for the pre-purchase inspection Aglony conducted before buying

the home, there is no other evidence showing she saw the home again

until after the contractors she hired completed their repairs.

Aglony testified she paid contractors around $45,000 to repair the

home before she put it on the market. The work she paid for included

repairing floors with a material known as shotcrete. Invoices from

Aglony’s contractors show that shotcrete was used in more than one of

the rooms of the home. 2 Aglony also paid contractors for work they did

to repair interior walls and to replace five windows on the back of the

home. Aglony’s contractors also installed flooring, carpeting, kitchen

2Shotcrete, also known as gunite, is “a mixture of cement, sand and water applied through a pressure hose, producing a dense hard layer of concrete used in building for lining tunnels and structural repairs.” NEW OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY 775, 1617 (3d ed. 2010) (defining gunite as quoted above and indicating that shotcrete “is another term for gunite” at page 1617). 4 counters, and painted the inside of the home. Due to the repairs, the

cracks on the floors and the walls inside the home were no longer visible

in a walk-through inspection of the home.

Pena, as Aglony’s agent, listed the home for $145,00 on an internet

listing, which Pena arranged to have posted in June 2017. The listing

includes general information about the fact the home had been remodeled

and updated throughout. That said, nothing is mentioned about the

shotcrete treatment applied to the floors of some of the rooms. Still,

nothing in the contractors’ invoices shows whether the shotcrete

treatment was cosmetic or structural, and there is also nothing in the

invoices showing how wide the cracks were in the floor. There is also no

evidence that Pena knew the contractors had used shotcrete to repair the

floors or that Pena knew whether the contractors had performed any

structural repairs on the walls of the home.

In July 2017, MacPherson signed a contract to purchase the home

for $140,000. MacPherson, as the buyer, and Aglony, as the seller, were

represented by separate real estate agents in the transaction. To

document the transaction, the parties used the “Texas Real Estate

Commission (TREC) One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale)”

5 form. As to the condition of the property, the contract contains two

options. First, a buyer may accept the property “as is,” a term the contract

defines as “the present condition of the property with any and all defects

and without warranty except for the warranties of title and the

warranties in this contract.” Second, the buyer may accept the property

as is subject to repairs that the seller specifically lists on the form. Under

the agreement MacPherson signed, MacPherson selected the first option,

accepting the property “as is.” But even then, MacPherson had the right

to inspect the property at reasonable times after signing the contract, and

he also had the option to terminate the contract for any reason for ten

days. As discussed below, the summary-judgment evidence shows that

MacPherson used a home inspector to inspect the property. Even though

the inspector found several problems during the inspection, MacPherson

did not exercise his option and cancel the contract; instead, he elected to

close on the home.

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Bluebook (online)
Colton MacPherson v. Carolina Pena and Suzanne Anderson Properties LLC, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/colton-macpherson-v-carolina-pena-and-suzanne-anderson-properties-llc-texapp-2022.