Caveat Vendor: Sellers of Real Estate Now Need to Beware of Misrepresentations about the Condition of Property

The common law approach to disclosure of latent defects in real property was caveat emptor, which meant sellers had no duty to disclose latent defects to purchasers.2 Most modem courts have mitigated the harshness of the doctrine by adopting a system that mandates disclosure by a seller of any latent defect3 material to the purchaser\u27s decision to buy the property and whose existence is known by the seller. Droz v. Trump highlights a growing trend among a number of Missouri courts willing to further narrow the seller protections of caveat emptor in favor of protecting innocent purchasers of real property. Most significant in this case is the use of the affirmative representation doctrine to completely cancel the purchaser\u27s duty to investigate latent defects