Ferguson v. Yaspan
Annotate this CaseThe Fergusons offered to sell their attorney, Yaspan, an interest in a London flat they owned. At Yaspan’s suggestion, the Fergusons hired independent counsel and the parties exchanged five drafts before signing a written agreement in 1995. This agreement enabled the Fergusons to recover nearly all of their original purchase price for the flat and still own half of it. Both the Fergusons and the Yaspans wanted to be partners with each other and not each others’ children, so they agreed that whichever couple outlived the other would have the right to buy out the deceased couple’s interest before that interest could pass to anyone else. The Fergusons were then 70 and 68 years old; the Yaspans were 49 and 47. The trial court concluded that Mrs. Ferguson’s 2011 petition to set aside the agreement as a product of Yaspan’s undue influence was untimely and without merit. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting arguments that the trial court erred by looking at the fairness of the Agreement as a whole rather than focusing on terms Ferguson identified as unfair, and giving insufficient weight to the statistical likelihood that the buyout provision would favor the Yaspans.
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