Realtors, as are many other licensed professionals, are required to maintain business records for a number of years. Prior to depositions being taken in this matter, all parties were required to turn over their evidence (files) about June / July of 2009. In the case of the Realtors, that evidence would include contracts, emails, faxes etc.
Our attorney had apparently forgotten to request the files from our Realtor in a timely manner which could have created a problem with her deposition already scheduled and rapidly approaching. You want to have the defendants' files available to you in advance so that you are able to review them prior to; and to use them during questioning at their deposition.
Opposing counsel was accommodating and agreed to have our Realtor's file available at her deposition. Moreover, he even sent a copy of the file over to our attorney a couple of days prior to her deposition.
To all of our astonishment, it turned out, our Realtor had no file; and indeed the documents submitted on her behalf were actually documents that Mike and I had provided during discovery. They merely copied our numbered exhibits and placed their bates stamp on them, and returned a set of our very own documents back to us.
To give you an idea of the significance of this; during the civil trial against our Realtor, our attorney rolled into the courtroom boxes of hard copy print outs of our exhibits. This collection of exhibits included a large legal box containing over two hundred (200) emails generated between us and others (mostly our realtor) during escrow. Emails we had produced during discovery.
When asked where her files were; the Realtor explained that her computer had crashed, and she had no hard copy files on our transaction. She had no copies of any contract agreements, disclosures, MLS listing, faxes, emails, etc. Nada!
However, when I initially contacted our Realtor back in April/May of 2008; confronting her with the fact that we had just experienced a flash flooding, and were advised by the county that our property was in a flood zone; the Realtor panicked asking if she could call me back. She then called from her office and immediately faxed us over several documents, including a flood determination we had never seen before.
After faxing over the documents she nervously exclaimed "you're not in a flood zone"; and went on to state that the sellers' Realtor had taken care of things "R-- said he'd take care of it! That's why he wanted to use his Title company!!!"
Apparently the computer crash occurred after this incident in May. Perhaps it was the a result of a civil suit being filed? Pure speculation . . .but . . .!
Coincidentally, during the deposition of our mortgage broker, our attorney was informed that all of the emails generated through escrow to and from her happened to disappear as well. Hmmm . . .
