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“We hired our agent because he was a real estate professional,” Ummel told Ann Curry of NBC's TODAY show. "I think he just wanted to go ahead and make his commission.”

Ummel argues that other similar homes in her neighborhood sold for as much as $175,000 less than the one she bought in 2005. With the value of homes dropping all over the country due to the sub-prime lending crisis, she feels she vastly overpaid for her property.

“We worked hard and to think we’d done that all of our lives and then for a Realtor not to tell us about the biggest purchase of our lives that there was a house selling for much less,” she complained to Curry.

Industry experts are concerned that her suit could be one of many. Joel Ruben, a real estate lawyer in Manhattan Beach, told the New York Times, “Agents have a lot of fiduciary duties, but they don’t make money unless they close the sale. In an inflated market, there are built-in temptations to cut corners.”

The defendant in the case is Mike Little with ReMax Associates. He contends that the Ummels should have been more thorough in their own research when buying a home. Other real estate experts agree. MSNBC legal analyst Susan Filan also spoke with TODAY, contending :

“I don’t think it’s a suit that has merit,” she said. “I think the standard of proof will be that this agent willfully, deliberately and with malicious intent withheld this information. This information that was allegedly withheld is public information."

In other words, home buyers are expected to do their homework and not rely solely on their agents to find the best deal.

In an era when personal responsibility in non-existent in our civil litigation system, will Ummel prevail in her lawsuit? I sure hope not.