Ace Realty, Inc. v. Looney

In Ace Realty, Inc. v. Looney, 1974 OK 96, 531 P.2d 1377 (Okla. 1974), the seller sought to terminate the rights of the purchaser under a real estate contract due to defects in the seller's title. Id. at 1378-79. The contract provided that the seller would have sixty days within which to meet any valid objections made by the buyer to the title. Defects to the title were not corrected within sixty days. Id. at 1379. The court held that the provision in the contract providing that the seller would have sixty days within which to meet valid objections to the title were for the benefit of the buyer and that the seller could not take advantage of this provision in the contract in an effort to avoid its own contractual obligations. Id. at 1380. In so holding, the court stated that "grounds available to the purchaser for rescission are not in general available to the seller for that purpose." The Ace Realty court concluded that, "in the absence of a contract provision to the contrary, the fact that there is a defect of title to the land sold does not authorize a rescission by the seller, since the purchaser may insist on what the seller is able to convey." Id. Ace Realty, Inc., is an expression of the principle that the failure of a seller to provide a merchantable or marketable title in accordance with the real estate contract does not permit the seller to forfeit the contract.