Kevin Bennett v. Angela Steliga, individually and personally and as Trustee of The Angela M. Steliga Living Trust dated January 14, 2013

Syllabus

This case arose from a proposed purchase and sales agreement relating to a private property between the defendants, the sellers, and the plaintiffs, the buyers. The defendants, Angela Steliga, individually and personally and as trustee of The Angela M. Steliga Living Trust dated January 14, 2013, and The Angela M. Steliga Living Trust dated January 14, 2013 (collectively the defendants or Steliga), appealed from a Superior Court judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, Kevin Bennett and Elizabeth Pawlson, following the Superior Court's grant of summary judgment on two counts contained in the plaintiffs' complaint—anticipatory repudiation and declaratory judgment.<br><br>The defendants argued on appeal that the hearing justice erred in determining that Steliga repudiated the purchase and sales agreement and, conversely, that the plaintiffs did not. Additionally, the defendants asserted that the hearing justice improperly declared the purchase and sales agreement to be valid, binding, and enforceable, because Steliga signed the agreement in her individual capacity, not in her capacity as trustee of the trust.<br><br>The Supreme Court upheld the hearing justice's grant of summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs on both the counts for declaratory judgment and anticipatory repudiation. As a matter of law, the Supreme Court held that the purchase and sales agreement could only be amended or terminated in writing, not orally. The Court also held that by failing to appear at the closing, the plaintiff repudiated her obligations under the contract. Further, the Court was unpersuaded by Steliga's argument that her signature invalidated the purchase and sales agreement because the Court had addressed the same issue of capacity in a previous case and found Steliga's situation to be indistinguishable from that prior holding.<br><br>After affirming the summary judgment motion, the Court moved on to address the remedies that the hearing justice granted to the plaintiffs—namely, sp