A real estate residential tenancy buyout brings back memories of swapped war stories from an earlier time in my career. Luminita Roman, T. C. Memo. 2023-142, filed 11/28/23, is the usual attempt to turn a litigation settlement into a Section 104(a)(2) physical injury tax exemption. Judge Emin (“Eminent”) Toro puts paid to that one: while Luminita and her ex have all kinds of physical ailments, the settlement agreement speaks of none. And their sparring over the 50/50 allocation of income leaves the result unchanged. It’s the usual fact-based plus read-the-settlement-agreement case.

But none of this is why that title is first written above at the head hereof, as my expensive colleagues would say.

This is a great war story, and the landlord-tenant division has probably seen variants played.

Luminita and ex were in a patient-caregiver relation, with plenty of governmental assistance, living in a privately-owned and operated apartment complex. They initiated lawsuits, State and Federal, administrative proceedings, and however often they lost, they were nowise deterred. The owners decided to sell (no wonder), but the prospective purchasers did their due diligence. They demanded a price cut of $1 million, or Luminita and ex removed from premises with no right of return, or no deal. Several offers to Luminita and ex were turned down.

OK, we’ve all seen this. But the seller’s trusty negotiator (whether attorney or not unstated, but a source tells me he may be a senior executive with a well-known national real estate organization) played a real stormer.

“…[seller] made the Romans an offer to pay $700,000 in exchange for their vacating the Apartments and executing a mutual release of any pending and future legal claims. Marc Renard, who negotiated the settlement with Ms. Roman on behalf of [seller], gave the Romans 15 minutes to accept the offer and told Ms. Roman that for every 15 minutes in which they did not accept (after the initial 15 minutes), the offer would go down by $50,000. Ms. Roman then conveyed the offer to Mr. Roman and told him she would leave him if he did not agree. Within the first 15 minutes set by Mr. Renard, the Romans accepted the offer.” T. C. Memo. 2023-142, at p. 7.

The agreement was signed in less than a week.

Mr. Renard gets a Taishoff “Good Job, First Class, Non-Attorney Division.”