Boccuti v. Spitznagle

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. A purchaser of leasehold property sold by administrators at a private sale appeals from an order of the orphans’ court setting the sale aside upon exceptions filed by a competing ⁵⁴⁴ bidder. The private sale was duly authorized, the price accepted was above the appraised value, and there is no question of the diligence of the administrators in seeking possible purchasers, unless the exceptant may be said to have raised one. His contention is that the administrators had promised him an opportunity to meet any higher offer than one he had already made, but failed to give him that opportunity before sale to the appellant.

This raises two questions: Upon exceptions duly filed, should the sale have been set aside under the circumstances ? Was the exceptant entitled to file his exceptions in view of the fact that he was not interested as a creditor or distributee of the estate ? The property consists of several lots of ground, and Boccuti was a tenant of one of them. After repeated efforts to-find purchasers, with reductions of the appraisals made from time to time to conform to the market, the administrators reported a sale to Boccuti for $9,400, a sum in excess of the last appraisal, as already stated.

Thereupon, Hyman Sarubin filed a petition and excepted, stating that he had made an earlier offer of $9,309, and had been advised — presumably by the administrators, although this is not stated — that if a higher bid should be made he would be afforded an opportunity of increasing his bid; that when on the day of sale he inquired of Mr. Boycroft, one of the administrators, he was told of the higher offer and was given fifteen minutes to make a still higher one; but that when his counsel, within the fifteen minutes, presented himself to Mr. Boycroft, ready to’ make a bid of $10,000, the agreement with Boccuti had been closed. Boccuti, it is alleged, had been told of Sarubin’s first offer, and had been induced to exceed it, contrary to a promise by the administrators. The administrators emphatically deny that they had made any promises to the exceptant as alleged, and aver that they had sought, and always held themselves ready to accept, the best price that was obtainable, and that the price they accepted from Boccuti was, so far as then appeared, the best obtainable. Delay was dangerous, as there was a threat of foreclosure of a mortgage on the property, and the price was accepted. ⁵⁴⁵ The controversy was submitted to the orphans’ court on the petition and a sworn answer to it by the administrators, and the court, on the case so presented to it, and an announcement of a possibility of obtaining $10,000 for the property on a public sale, proposed that the public sale should be held, and new bids received; but Boccuti declined the