Claims against real estate agent dismissed.

We successfully defended a real estate agent in a suit brought by the agent’s former client. Our client represented the plaintiff in connection with her purchase of a residential property with an on-lot septic system in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Prior to her purchase, the plaintiff had the septic system inspected by a home and septic inspection company, and the system passed the inspection. Four months after the plaintiff closed and moved into the property, she decided to sell. The plaintiff’s prospective buyers once again had the septic system inspected, but this time the system failed the inspection. The plaintiff claimed she was advised by a local septic contractor who had serviced the property for years that the system likely failed the inspection because the drain field would not perc (and had failed to perc many times in the past), and that the only remedy was to completely upgrade the septic system with a new holding tank. Because the plaintiff did not want her buyers to walk away from the sale, she decided to pay to upgrade the system at a significant expense. Once the sale was finalized, the plaintiff then sued our client, claiming the defendant knew or should have known that the septic system was faulty and that she should have advised the plaintiff not to purchase the property with the faulty system. After the plaintiff presented her case in chief, we moved to dismiss her complaint, arguing that the plaintiff failed to present sufficient, credible evidence that our client had any knowledge prior to the plaintiff’s purchase of the property that the septic system was faulty. The court agreed, granted the motion and entered judgment in our client’s favor.