To anyone who understands the Common Law of Agency -- the current prevailing law in Michigan -- Carol Frick's public interpretation is no less than astounding! Her comments about current practice are tantamount to a confession of ongoing violation of the actual law! Her remedy is pretty straightforward: "Let's end our lawbreaking by changing the law so our duplicitous practices are no longer illegal!" Here's how she describes the situation and practice under the current law: "Our original agency disclosure law ... created confusion because of dual agency. This is what exists now. Dual agency is - 'I can represent you and I owe you a fiduciary relationship and I will hold what you tell me in confidence. All of a sudden, if you want to buy one of the listings in our office, now I am this other guy's agent too.' It creates confusion. The client wonders 'Yesterday you represented me, now you are a dual agent?'" That is absolutely NOT what the Common Law, disclosure and dual agency are all about. She is clearly saying that "yesterday" this buyer-client thought she represented him. How could she have done that if she was already under agreement with sellers to promote their homes to this buyer the moment he walked into her office? She was their agent, obligated then to reveal to them anything about him that would serve their interests, and to actively pitch their properties to him at the highest obtainable price before he found something better elsewhere. That was her duty under the law! How could she, fulfill her duties under pre-existing seller agent agreements and at the same time be a buyer's agent searching all available properties for the best fit at the lowest price?? Can this long-experienced "agent" and President of Michigan Realtors possibly not know that what she describes as their current practice is the same exact duplicitous behavior uncovered in 1983 by the Federal Trade Commission. The 1983 FTC "Report of the Residential Real Estate Industry" specifically exposed the common practice of sellers' agents suckering buyers into thinking they were represented by these people. That is precisely what led to the enactment of reforms -- disclosure laws with the fanciful notion that the laws might actually be obeyed. Despite the ludicrous allegation of President Frick that disclosure "causes confusion", it simply requires her to tell the truth to the buyer the minute he walks in her door. Of course, to LATER disclose an inconvenient truth omitted earlier is the real source of the confusion. The lead writer of that FTC study, Paul Roark, can be quoted today right off the back cover of my book, "Bought, Not Sold," where he says: "The FTC exposed abuses back in 1983, many of which remain even today. As the book shows, reform efforts were often either superficial, unenforced, or subverted by vested interests which still continue working against the consumer." Clearly, the disclosure requirement in Michigan has not been effectively enforced -- but just in case enforcement is demanded by increasingly aware consumers, the vested interests are now taking the subversion route via the nonsense device of "designated agency." There is one thing that prevents this confession by the Michigan Realtor President from indicting all Michigan Realtors -- that is the fact that some of them have had the good-sense to not be swept up in the MAR hype of this anti-consumer legislation. All Realtors in Michigan owe a debt to those who have called for a second-look at what is really going on here. The fact is that this nonsense passed in more than two-dozen states in a well coordinated campaign of associated vested interests -- but all before those on the consumer side got their act together. It came together in Massachusetts to the utter humiliation of Realtors there when the Executive Director of that "MAR" took his place before the legislative hearing committee and the Chair opened with this question: "What were you THINKING when you came up with this?" Both Realtors and those legislators conned into passing it in other states will face the same eventual humiliation as this stuff falls in courts and in repeal. As Mike Morin joked, some lawyers are already salivating at the prospect. Michigan can be the second state where the legislature stood up to be counted in turning back this offensive against consumers -- or it can be the FIRST state in which Realtors themselves do it by asking their own leaders "WHAT were you thinking...?" Ray Wilson

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