It’s Tuesday morning at 9:30 and I’m just over an hour into my civic requirement: jury duty. There’s no way of telling what sort of trial one might get called for today but there is one thing that won’t be on the docket: real estate. I’m not sure of the full history and nor an attorney but the story goes that there was so much real estate clogging the courts that a solution had to be found outside of the courtroom.
That solution is mediation, arbitration and small claims court and the process is written into the standard Oregon Real Estate Form Earnest Money Agreement (EMA). The EMA is the standard Realtor used contract for purchase and sale of real property in Oregon. There are two sections. The first deals with disputes between the buyer and seller. In this scenario the process is mediation, then arbitration if it is not resolvable in small claims court (most often earnest money disputes). If a Realtor is named in the dispute, it goes straight to arbitration if small claims court can’t be used (mediation is not binding, arbitration is). The contract states that by signing the contract you are giving up the right to have a claim heard by a judge and/or jury.
I’ll update this later in the day and make it Wednesday’s post.
Not selected. I have done my civic duty for 24 months.
One Comment on “Oregon Real Estate Case Law”
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The limitation of legal rights is often skipped or misunderstood by many agents in the earnest money agreement. I am glad you put that in here.
Though I had never heard that it was instituted because of the case load. I thought it related to most contracts now that try to limit remedies by parties to save money by at least one side as a court case is exponentially more expensive.