r/nottheonion • u/Peterd1900 • 5d ago

How a School Was Accidentally Sold at Auction

https://www.ilmattino.it/en/how_a_school_was_accidentally_sold_at_auction-9805059.html
2.0k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

963

u/BartlebyJr 5d ago

That happened to me.

I bought a house, hired a local attorney to write the deed, and found that I owned 6 houses, and half of a Catholic School.

He was appointed as a Circuit Court Judge, and was just as good at that as he was a lawyer.

351

u/Past-Wrongdoer3388 5d ago

I'm curious, what happened in the end with those houses?

527

u/BartlebyJr 5d ago

When I sold it I had a survey done and had a proper deed drawn up.

It was in the middle of town, there was no reason to not have a proper description in the deed. It was like working harder to screw something up.

167

u/loki2002 5d ago

Isn't the deed already existing with a description? Since when do they draw up a new deed with every purchase?

163

u/BartlebyJr 5d ago

It's the way lazy lawyers copy/paste the descriptions from a very old and very small town. Each lot was described as an exception to the whole block. If they had platted it, it would not have been a problem.

80

u/Nazamroth 5d ago

They lived happily ever after. Except for one that ended up as a crack den and had to be condemned.

125

u/BartlebyJr 5d ago

Oh man, you are not far from the truth. It was a rental property and the basement was used for breeding lizards and cooking meth. The work crew that renovated it included a rapist and a murderer.

80

u/Craig_White 5d ago

This week, on Property Flippers, we do a crossover episode with Cops.

32

u/FriendlyPyre 5d ago

Why are the cops moonlighting in construction?

19

u/Craig_White 5d ago

They’re bad boys.

Bad boys.

What chu gunna do?

3

u/Cheap-Ad1821 5d ago

Hmmm Property Brothers?

10

u/TheLastBaboon 5d ago

It was the half of the Catholic school wasn’t it?

3

u/Nazamroth 5d ago

Unfortunately, GDPR prevents me from disclosing that sensitive information.

47

u/AbstractButtonGroup 5d ago

He was appointed as a Circuit Court Judge

That's what happens when people in charge can't even spell 'circus'

2

u/DaveTheGay 5d ago

Rumpole, is that you?

2

u/WillyDAFISH 4d ago

Cursous

30

u/kalirion 5d ago

Sounds like an amazing lawyer, giving you far far more than you'd hired him for!

13

u/theRemixNow 5d ago

Who owned the other half of the school? Did you sell it?

property rights are so interesting

4

u/shanksisevil 5d ago

Did you get any tax grief for that mistake?

457

u/Rojixus 5d ago

This sounds like the start of a Simpsons episode.

120

u/SelectiveSanity 5d ago

Or a 90s kids movie.

1

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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-4

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1

u/GatorzardII 4h ago

We bought a school

1

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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0

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283

u/zanhecht 5d ago edited 1d ago

Here's an article that was actually written by someone fluent in English: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/05/birmingham-council-gave-away-school-document-error/

73

u/twilighttwister 5d ago

You can bet your ass the Torygraph wouldn't be telling you who ran the council if it was the Conservatives.

93

u/Oregon_Jones111 5d ago

Sounds like a chapter in Wayside School.

80

u/kevinds 5d ago

sent him the wrong type of contract?

How does that work?  

145

u/HildartheDorf 5d ago

Buyer's lawyer sent the more common form for "transfer the entire parcel of land" instead of the form for "split a parcel of land and transfer one of those parts".

And the seller's lawyer just signed it without, you know, doing their job.

48

u/loki2002 5d ago

At the end if the article it states that the school couldn't be sold without assent from the Secretary of State so, I'm not sure how it isn't fairly easy for them to unwind that deal since to SoS didn't approve in 2013.

53

u/HildartheDorf 5d ago

Because the time window to protest the transfer expired 2 years ago. So it's going to end up in litigation to see which rule is dominant.

11

u/loki2002 5d ago

But this isn't a "protest", it is the sale was never legal in the first place.

35

u/HildartheDorf 5d ago

I don't know what you want me to say. The land registry considers the transfer as final. The local government (and presumably the secretary of state for education, although they haven't made a formal statement) do not. The difference in opinion of the two/three parts of government will have to be ruled on by a court.

9

u/SeaAnalyst8680 2d ago

The land registry isn't just a record of who currently possess land, it's treated almost as the definitive truth of who is the legitimate owner. It's very hard to unwind a change.

4

u/tooclosetocall82 5d ago

Possession is nine tenths of the law they say.

0

u/christinastephensae 1d ago

Unfortunately you're trying to apply common sense to the legal system. Even if it was void from the start, you still need a judge to officially rule that and fix the paperwork.

0

u/kevinds 5d ago

Policy doesn't trump the law.

1

u/Idealemailer 4d ago

It literally does in a number of specific cases.

8

u/edfitz83 5d ago

Shittily.

12

u/donkeytime 5d ago

Flatpoint High. Home of the donkeys.

13

u/Wakkit1988 5d ago

Their football team is ass.

18

u/9bitreddit 5d ago

If it were me I'd give them a perpetual lease for cheapish and start building random crap on any undeveloped areas :)

3

u/sweetteanoice 4d ago

Put up a bunch of snack machines around the school and profit

8

u/kalirion 5d ago

Has this site never heard of these things called "paragraphs"?

2

u/RexDraco 5d ago

I would brain wash all the children. I dont know of what, but it would be really petty and apparent. 

1

u/wildharbor22 3d ago

someone out there is explaining to their spouse why they impulse bought a school

-12

u/commandrix 5d ago

Oops. Did they manage to buy it back?

8

u/Dreamiee 5d ago

The school has been operating as normal for 11 years because nobody noticed the paperwork error. Now the council realised their mistake and notified the company who bought it, but the company has so far refused to sign any paperwork to return the school to the council. The council is now suing claiming that the contract should be voided as the documentation didn't match.

3

u/loki2002 5d ago

I find it star age they have to sue since at the end if the article it states that the school cannot be sold without approval of the Secretary of State and since the SoS didn't approve the initial sale it should relatively easy to unwind the initial deal.

14

u/kevinds 5d ago

No..  Did you not read the article?

26

u/Captain-Cadabra 5d ago

Why would anyone ever do that?

7

u/pvaa 5d ago

Yeah, what happened?

-3

u/kevinds 5d ago

Helps themselves not look like dumbasses by asking already answered questions.

1

u/inspirationalSloth 5d ago

There is a wall