Question
Read the scenario below. In three to five sentences, under Georgia law, analyze whether the Shorts had a duty to disclose that the two lots
Read the scenario below. In three to five sentences, under Georgia law, analyze whether the Shorts had a duty to disclose that the two lots were "haunted"?
The Shorts had purchased two adjoining lots on 5455 Nice Street in Fort Valley, Georgia, as investment property. One of the lots was zoned residential and contained a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that the Shorts rented out. The other lot, zoned commercial, was vacant. In September of 2021, the Shorts rented the house to a thirty-year-old business woman. Barely a month later the police called the Shorts. A neighbor of the business woman had asked the police to investigate the Shorts' Nice Street house. The neighbor reported he had heard a lot of yelling at the house and then a gun shot. The police found the front door open and the business woman dead, apparently shot by an intruder. The Shorts next rented the Nice Street house to a family. As soon as the family moved in, they reported that their television set repeatedly turned on and off, often in the middle of the night. The children claimed they had seen the ghost of the dead woman and were too terrified to sleep in their rooms. The neighborhood children started calling the Nice Street house the "haunted house" and refused to play with the children of the family renting the house. A few months later the family moved out complaining that they did not want to live with a ghost. After that the Shorts tried without success to rent the Nice Street house. At the same time the Shorts posted a "For Sale" sign on the two lots. The Shorts wanted to sell them for $370,000, the price at which the Shorts had purchased them 10 years earlier. The Shorts received no offers until almost a year later. A retired couple, the Browns, called the Shorts to ask the sale price on the two lots. The couple was looking to move to a warmer climate and open a small toy store. When the Browns heard the asking price of $370,000, they said they might be interested in purchasing the lots. The Shorts met the Browns at the lots and gave them a tour of the house. The Browns explained to the Shorts that they wanted to build a small toy store on the vacant commercial property and live next door in the house. They said that they were attracted to the lots because of their location and because the asking price seemed reasonable. The Shorts told the Browns that the only reason they had put such a low price on the property was because it had been on the market for a while. The Shorts needed to sell the property quickly because they were in need of cash to pay for unexpected expenses. The sale went through sixty days later, and the Browns immediately started construction on the vacant lot.
They hoped to have the construction finished by the time they moved to Fort Valley. Six months later the Browns moved into the Nice Street house and opened the then completed toy store. Business at the toy store seemed very slow. The Browns noticed that none of the children from the neighborhood came into the store. They did get some business from people vacationing in Fort Valley. A week after the Browns moved into the house, their television turned on in the middle of the night. They didn't think anything of it until it happened the next two nights in a row. When Mr. Brown got up to turn off the television, he thought he saw something white and filmy at the other end of the room. Then the same thing started happening to the small television in the toy store. The Browns made sure they had turned off the television before locking the store for the evening, but they found the television turned on when they opened the store the next morning. Before they turned on the store lights in the morning, the Browns thought they glimpsed something white moving at the other end of the store. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary when they turned the lights on. A few days later Mr. Brown struck up a conversation with the teenage clerk at the local grocery store. The clerk asked Mr. Brown whether he had just moved to town. When Mr. Brown told him he owned the new toy store and lived next door, the clerk said, "I didn't think the Shorts would ever sell the haunted house." Mr. Brown said, "What do you mean?" The clerk said, "Everybody around here knows the house is haunted. Why do you think you paid such a low price for it?" Understandably shaken, Mr. Brown went home and told his wife the news. They immediately called the Shorts and accused them of tricking the retired couple. The Browns demanded their money back and demanded to be reimbursed for the cost of construction of the toy store. The Shorts refused.
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