## Facts

- Buyers contracted on March 18, 2004 to purchase sellers’ residence in Somerville, New Jersey, with a June 15, 2004 closing date.
- After contract formation, one seller’s spinal muscular atrophy significantly worsened, leaving her profoundly disabled with weakness affecting mobility and breathing.
- Medical evidence indicated that moving residences would likely precipitate respiratory failure and hasten death, making relocation medically dangerous.
- On June 14, 2004, sellers notified buyers they would not convey title; buyers issued a time-of-the-essence notice setting a June 25, 2004 closing, which sellers again refused.
- The contract lacked a liquidated-damages clause or an express remedy for a seller’s refusal to convey.
- Buyers claimed the property had unique value and sought specific performance and damages for delay-related losses, including increased financing costs.

## Issues

1. Whether equity should order specific performance of a residential real-estate sale contract when conveyance would impose extraordinary, potentially life-threatening hardship on a seller due to severe medical deterioration.
2. Whether, despite a valid contract and the buyers’ readiness to perform, the appropriate remedy is money damages rather than compelled conveyance because of the sellers’ unforeseen hardship.

## Decision

- The court denied the buyers’ motion for summary judgment seeking specific performance.
- The court held that compelling conveyance would be inequitable because performance would impose extraordinary injustice and hardship on the sellers given the medically dangerous consequences of moving.
- The court ruled that the buyers’ remedy was limited to pursuing monetary damages for breach, including provable economic losses caused by the failure to close.

## Legal Principles

- Specific performance is an equitable remedy granted in the court’s discretion, not as a matter of right, even in real-estate contracts where land is often treated as unique.
- Equity may deny specific performance when enforcement would result in injustice or impose undue hardship on the party against whom performance is sought.
- A buyer’s entitlement to damages for breach is not eliminated merely because equitable relief is denied; the non-breaching party may recover proven losses caused by the breach.

## Conclusion

The court refused to compel sale of the residence because enforcing the contract would impose extraordinary and medically dangerous hardship on the sellers, limiting the buyers to monetary damages for the breach rather than specific performance.


Kilarjian v. Vastola, 877 A.2d 372 (N.J. Super. Ct. Ch. Div. 2004)