Author: Dugan Arnett

The property listing in Beaver, Pa., extolled the countless charms of the Colonial Revival. There was the “grand foyer with a handmade railing,” the built-in cabinets and “beautiful” hardwood floors, and the covered porch offering “stunning” views of the nearby Ohio River.

“This home adorns many wonderful features,” the listing read, “and outstanding details throughout.”

One detail, however, was notably absent from the listing: the sizable swastika arranged in permanent tile on the basement floor.

That omission has become the source of an unusual legal battle, a disturbing discovery that has weaved its way through the state court system and raised questions — legal and otherwise — about what represents a “material defect” in a property.

“I certainly have not seen [this] particular fact-pattern come up before,” said Hank Lerner, chief legal officer for the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors. “It’s a pretty specific one.”

When Daniel and Lynn Rae Wentworth closed on the five-bedroom home in 2023, for around $550,000, it was easy to see the draw. Anchored on a spacious lot, just a block from the river, the home was idyllic by just about any measure.

But shortly after moving in, the Wentworths were clearing out the basement when they discovered the grim iconography in tile — a swastika, along with, what appeared to the couple, to be an image of a Nazi eagle. (According to the Wentworths, the tiled images had been covered by rugs during the inspection of the home.)

“Mortified,” as they would later say, the Wentworths filed a complaint in Beaver County civil court, alleging the previous owner had violated the Pennsylvania Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law, and seeking monetary damages.

The Wentworths argued they would never have bought the home had they known about the tiled floor. Nor, they said, could they be expected to live in the home — or sell it — given its condition. In their complaint, the couple estimated it would cost roughly $30,000 to replace the floor.

“This … is just not something you’d ever expect to have to deal with,” said Daniel Stoner, an attorney for the Wentworths.

“They could have actual economic harm from the potential reputational damage if people thought they put it in themselves or were aware of it.”

The seller — an 85-year-old German immigrant who’d owned the home for nearly a half-century — did not share this view.

In response to the Wentworths’ suit, Albert A. Torrence, an attorney for the seller, argued in a court filing that “purely psychological stigmas do not constitute material defects of property … and a seller has no duty to disclose them.”

What’s more, he argued, the Wentworths had failed to identify any untruthful or inaccurate statements he’d made regarding the property.

In an interview, Torrence denied that the home’s previous owner was a Nazi supporter. Forty years ago, he said, the previous owner had been reading a book about the swastika symbol being co-opted by Germany’s Nazi Party; angry, he decided to include the symbol in a basement renovation project, placed a rug over it not long after, and forgot about it.

“And, of course, it fits into the narrative, ‘A Nazi lived in this house,’” said Torrence. “It’s just not the narrative that people want it to be.”

Regardless, the case raised an interesting question: When it comes to property sales, what, exactly, does rise to the level of a material defect worthy of disclosure?

Pennsylvania law requires sellers to disclose a laundry list of potential problems with a home — termites, structural or heating problems, sewage issues. “[Any] problem with a residential real property or any portion of it that would have a significant adverse impact on the value of the property or that involves an unreasonable risk to people on the property.”

Absent from that list? Hate symbols that had been permanently embedded.

In court filings, the previous owner cited an earlier case that had advanced all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In 2007, after a California resident purchased a Delaware County home, she learned from a neighbor that the property had been the site of a grisly — and highly publicized — murder-suicide. The new owner, Janet S. Milliken, sued.

In that case, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the home’s unfortunate history did not represent a material defect, adding that it would be impossible to quantify the psychological impact of various events that might have occurred on a given property.

“Does a bloodless death by poisoning or overdose create a less significant ‘defect’ than a bloody one from a stabbing or shooting?” the court wrote. “How would one treat other violent crimes such as rape, assault, home invasion, or child abuse? What if the killings were elsewhere, but the sadistic serial killer lived there? What if satanic rituals were performed in the house?”

Leaning heavily upon the Supreme Court’s decision in the Milliken case, the Beaver County trial court dismissed the Wentworths’ complaint.

Unsatisfied with the ruling, the Wentworths appealed.

In a decision filed late last year, three Superior Court judges affirmed the initial ruling that the tiled imagery was not required to be disclosed in accordance with the state’s disclosure law.

“A basement that floods, a roof that leaks, beams that were damaged by termites … these are the conditions our legislature requires sellers to disclose if they are known,” the judges wrote in an 18-page ruling filed Nov. 12.

“We are not dismissive of the Wentworths’ outrage, nor their concern that the existence of the images could taint them as Nazi supporters,” the decision went on. “With this lawsuit, however, they have made a public record to counter any supposition in that regard.”

Though the couple could’ve appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Stoner, their attorney, said this week that they had decided against doing so, citing the low likelihood that the case would’ve been heard by the court.

“I’ve only had one case in my entire career that they’ve actually taken up,” Stoner said. “So the chances of them even getting it heard weren’t the greatest.”

As for the home, Lynn Rae Wentworth told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle recently that she and her husband planned to remove the tiling once they were sure the legal wrangling had concluded.

She said they were also considering approaching local legislators in hopes of changing the law, making hate symbols material defects that necessitated disclosure.

As she told the publication, “I don’t want anyone to have to go through this again.”