The First District recently applied the ‘procuring cause’ doctrine to award the plaintiff real estate broker a money judgment based on a reasonable brokerage commission in Jameson Real Estate, LLC v. Ahmed, 2018 IL App (1st) 171534.
The broker provided the defendant with specifics concerning an “off market” car wash business and the land it sat on. The plaintiff later gave defendant a written brokerage contract for the sale of the car wash business and property that provided for a 5% sales commission. The defendant never signed the contract.
After many months of negotiations, defendant orally informed plaintiff he no longer wished to buy the property and stopped communicating with plaintiff.
When plaintiff later learned that defendant bought the property behind plaintiff’s back, plaintiff sued to recover his 5% commission. The trial court directed a verdict for defendant on plaintiff’s express contract claims but entered judgment for plaintiff on his quantum meruit complaint count. The money judgment was for an amount that was congruent with what a typical buyer’s broker – splitting a commission with a selling broker – would earn in a comparable commercial sale.
Quantum meruit, which means “as much as he deserves” provides a broker plaintiff with a cause of action to recover the reasonable value of services rendered but where no express contract exists between the parties.
A quantum meruit plaintiff must plead and prove (1) it performed a service to the benefit of a defendant, (2) that it did not perform the service gratuitously, (3) the defendant accepted the plaintiff’s service, and (4) no written contract exists to prescribe payment for the service.
The fine-line distinction between quantum meruit and unjust enrichment is that in the former, the measure of recovery is the reasonable value of work and material furnished, while in the unjust enrichment setting, the focus is on the benefit received and retained as a result of the improvement provided. [¶ 61]
In the real estate setting, a quantum meruit commission recovery can be based on either a percentage of the sales price or the amount a buyer saved by excising a broker’s fee from a given transaction. [¶ 64]
Where a real estate broker brings parties together who ultimately consummate a real estate sale, the broker is treated as the procuring cause of the completed deal. In such a case, the broker is entitled to a reasonable commission shown by the evidence. A broker can be deemed a procuring cause where he demonstrates he was involved in negotiations and in disseminating property information which leads to a completed sale. [¶ 69]
The appeals court found the trial court’s quantum meruit award of $50,000, which equaled the seller’s broker commission and which two witnesses testified was a reasonable purchaser’s broker commission, was supported by the evidence. (Note – this judgment amount was less than half of what the broker sought in his breach of express contract claim – based on the unsigned 5% commission agreement.)
The Court rejected defendant’s ‘unclean hands’ defense premised on plaintiff’s failure to publicly list the property (so he could purchase it himself) and his lag time in asserting his commission rights.
The unclean hands doctrine prevents a party from taking advantage of its own wrong. It prevents a plaintiff from obtaining legal relief where he is guilty of misconduct in connection with the subject matter of the litigation. For misconduct to preclude recovery, it must rise to the level of fraud or bad faith. In addition, the misconduct must be directly aimed at the party against whom relief is sought. Conduct geared towards a third party, no matter how egregious, generally won’t support an unclean hands defense.
Here, the defendant’s allegation that the plaintiff failed to publicly list the property, even if true, wasn’t directed at the defendant. If anything, the failure to list negatively impacted the non-party property owner, not the defendant.
Afterwords:
In the real estate broker setting, procuring cause doctrine provides a viable fall-back theory of recovery in the absence of a definite, enforceable contract.
Where a broker offers witness testimony of a customary broker commission for a similar property sale, this can serve as a sufficient evidentiary basis for a procuring cause/quantum meruit recovery.