Pre-emption Right Knowledge and Contractual Consent in Real Estate Sale

The case involved a dispute where a party, having signed a commitment to purchase real estate, subsequently claimed they were unaware of a pre-existing right of pre-emption held by a third party, asserting this ignorance vitiated their consent to the sale. The court of last resort quashed the lower court's decision, reasoning that the seller had a legal obligation to disclose known encumbrances affecting the property being sold, and the existence of a statutory right of pre-emption, being a public and legally established right, was a matter of law that the buyer could not reasonably claim ignorance of, thus the alleged error regarding the existence of this right did not constitute a vitiating factor for consent under the relevant civil code provisions.