Consiglio v. Carey

During the summer seasons from 1975 through 1978, the defendant operated a restaurant called Dorsie’s Steak House in a woodframe building at 183 Main Street in West Yarmouth. He paid the plaintiffs rents which escalated from $4,500 the first year to $8,500 in 1978. In the spring of 1979 the parties discussed the possibility of purchase and sale and apparently arrived at an understanding that the defendant would purchase the building and roughly an acre of land (the plaintiffs owned twenty-six acres) for $195,000. But the defendant then dragged his feet, and on June 8, 1979, the plaintiffs’…