Obligations and contracts

The Supreme Court (TS) has confirmed that the buyer of a property can claim the fulfillment of a pending obligation of the seller, even if that land has already been sold. In this case, it was still pending to formally separate the plot from another larger property in which it was integrated.

The story began in 1990, when a man purchased through a private contract a rustic land in Motril. The plot was part of a larger registered property and the seller was to carry out its segregation . However, that obligation remained unfulfilled , which prevented the registration of the purchase in the Property Registry.

The matter went through several judicial procedures. First, it was achieved that the contract was taken to a public deed , but the segregation still needed to be resolved. Later, the buyer attempted to do it on his own, although that action was annulled because he did not have the consent of the owner of the main estate. Furthermore, in 2008 he had sold the land to eight other people.

There was the main discussion , if he was no longer the owner, could he still claim? The TS distinguishes two things. The original buyer could not ask to be recognized as the current owner, because he had sold the estate. But he could demand that the contract he had signed be fulfilled since by transferring the land he had not removed his status as buyer in that agreement , which remained incomplete.

The heir of the seller also argued about which land had been sold exactly. The TS rejected this objection because the Court had taken into account different elements , including the traditional measurements used in the contract, the positions previously held by the defendants, and the report of a judicial expert. It had not been based solely on the data from the Cadastre.