A man and a woman were in a relationship for several years and lived together in an apartment owned by the woman. During the relationship, the man paid sums which, according to him, were intended, in accordance with an oral agreement between the parties, for the purpose of acquiring rights in the property against the payment of the mortgage.
The Supreme Court held that the man cannot be granted rights in the property due to the lack of a written contract. A commitment to make a transaction in real estate or to grant rights in real estate requires a written document. The Statute of Frauds requirement that is not only evidentiary but also substantial, without which the transaction has no validity, based on the rationale that the written requirement as mentioned will necessitate that the parties not carry out such important transactions in a hasty manner, but exercise informed judgment. However, the writing requirement as mentioned above is not absolute, and in certain cases, where the circumstances of the case are exceptional and amount to extreme bad faith, the "cry of fairness" leads to the possibility of recognizing real estate transactions even without a written document between the parties. Here, although it appears that there was indeed an oral agreement between the parties to grant the man rights to the property, there is no written agreement between the parties and the circumstances of the case are not special and unusual to the extent that warrant recognition of the agreements that, as stated, without such a contract, and the man cannot be granted rights to the property.