Skip to Content
Legal Alert – Ashmus v. Coughlin, Slip Opinion No. 2025-Ohio-2412
On July 10, 2025, the Supreme Court of Ohio decided Ashmus v. Coughlin, Slip Opinion No. 2025-Ohio-2412, a case which modifies the mandatory disclosure requirements in the sale of a residential property.
Under Ohio law, before the sale of residential property, the seller must complete and provide a “Residential Property Disclosure Form” to the prospective buyer. The purpose of this form is to disclose any “material defects” known to the seller relating to the physical condition of the property to be transferred. R.C. 5302.30(D)(1).
A “material defect” is defined as “any non-observable physical condition existing on the property that could be dangerous to anyone occupying the property or any non-observable physical condition that could inhibit a person’s use of the property.”
The Court’s opinion in Ashmus v. Coughlin provides guidance to the following question: what constitutes ‘a non-observable physical condition that could inhibit a person’s use of the property?’
The issue in Ashmus v. Coughlin was whether the sellers had a duty to disclose an underground sewer line beneath the property on the Residential Property Disclosure Form.
While under contract and before the closing of the sale, the buyer discovered a recorded easement in the county’s public records revealing the existence of an underground sewer line. The location of the underground sewer line interfered with the buyer’s plans to build a new home on the property. Having determined that relocation of the sewer line would be prohibitively expensive, the buyer refused to follow through with the purchase of the property. When the seller sued buyer for breach of the contract, the buyer claimed that the underground sewer line was a “material defect” and seller’s failure to disclose it in the Residential Property Disclosure Form excused buyer from closing.
Ultimately, the Court disagreed and ruled in favor of the seller, holding that the underground sewer line did not constitute a material defect for purposes of the disclosure form, and therefore the seller had no duty to disclose it. In coming to its decision, the Court focused on two key principles:
- The ordinary usage of the word “defect” means having some “inadequacy or flaw.”
- The reference to “a” person’s use – as opposed to “the” person’s use – within the definition of “material defect” suggests that the standard is meant to be objective.
As to the Court’s first point, the buyer’s argument was that the underground sewer line was a “material defect” because of its location, not because there was some failure in the sewer line itself. The Court found that the inconvenient location of an otherwise perfectly working sewer line does not give rise to a “defect” within the plain meaning of the word. Because the Residential Property Disclosure Form requires the seller to disclose material defects, they had no obligation to disclose an otherwise functioning sewer line.
As to its second point, the Court said it best: “…the disclosure form does not require that the seller anticipate how a particular buyer might use the property; instead, the form requires that the seller describe a condition that would interfere with an ordinary buyer’s use of the property.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, the seller is not responsible for examining the specific buyer’s intended use of the property in deciding whether the condition would inhibit such use.
The key takeaways from the Supreme Court of Ohio’s decision are:
- A seller’s obligation to disclose to non-observable physical conditions is limited to those which constitute a true “defect” within the common meaning of the word.
- The evaluation as to whether a particular condition “could inhibit a person’s use” is based upon an objective standard, and the seller has no obligation to consider the specific buyer’s plans for the property in deciding whether the condition could inhibit their use of the property.
A copy of the Ashmus decision may be found at:
https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2025/2025-Ohio-2412.pdf
Written by:
Matthew W. Onest, Esq.
330-244-4498
monest@kwgd.com
Carrie J. Freeman, Esq.
330-433-2514
cfreeman@kwgd.com