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94 Conn. 125

108 A 537

Commander v. Lawler

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Decided December 5, 1919

Supreme Court of Connecticut · decided 1919-12-05

Action to recover a commission for services rendered as a real-estate broker at the alleged request of the defendant, brought to the Superior Court in Hartford County and tried to the jury before Case, J.; the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff for $560, which the trial court upon motion set aside as against the evidence, and from this decision the plaintiff appealed.

Relies on Home Banking & Realty Co. v. Baum

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

No error · Decided 1919-12-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently October 1983

8 state decisions

4019191920193019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Prentice, C. J.

¶1 It is well settled that a broker in whose hands real estate has been placed for sale by its owner, is entitled to his commission, agreed upon or customary, when his efforts have resulted in a sale, or in procuring a customer who is ready, able and willing to buy upon the terms prescribed by the owner. Home Banking & Realty Co. v. Baum, 85 Conn. 383, 386, 82 Atl. 970. His right to the commission is dependent upon the concurrence of two conditions: (1) the creation either expressly or impliedly of an agency employment to effect a sale, and (2) the execution of the terms of the employment to the extent of procuring a customer ready, able and willing to buy upon the terms prescribed by the owner.

¶2 In the present case the plaintiff failed to offer proof reasonably justifying the jury in finding that either one of these conditions had been complied with. His own evidence carefully avoided the statement that the defendant put the property in question into his hands for sale or employed him to effect a sale of it, and evidence of that important fact, vehemently denied by the defendant, is not elsewhere supplied. That the defendant ever agreed to sell upon terms acceptable to the customer whom the plaintiff claims to have pro *127 cured, nowhere appears by competent evidence. The trial court was only performing its plain duty when it set aside the verdict.

¶3 There is no error.

¶4 In this opinion the other judges concurred.

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