Nantucket Real Estate Firm Ordered To Pay $1.3 Million in Lawsuit Over Sale Of Polpis Road Property

A judge and jury have issued a $1.3 million judgment against a major Nantucket real estate firm after finding that one of its agents lied to a couple looking to buy a house on the island in 2020.

The jury and Norfolk Superior Court Judge Ira Gant ruled that Melanie Gowen, who works for William Raveis Nantucket, misled the couple and misrepresented the Polpis Road home that they purchased for $1.45 million.

William Raveis and Gowen have filed a notice of appeal of the judgment. In the meantime, the $1,280,886 owed to the couple, Mary Murray and Jeffrey Ment, will continue to accrue interest.

Gowen told Murray and Ment that the home, a two-bedroom house at 151 Polpis Road, could be expanded to accommodate their needs. Murray and Ment have six children, and were looking for a house large enough to host their eight-person family. They say Gowen assured them that the home could be doubled in size, but in reality, because of a deed restriction and zoning rules, the home could not be expanded.

“We never questioned Melanie [Gowen] because she said she’d gone to the building department,” Murray told the Current. “We didn't fact-check her because why would we? I 100 percent believed that."

The lawsuit was filed back in 2021, and after a five-year journey in the legal system, the jury issued its verdict in January 2026, with an amended judgment issued in June 2026. The notice of appeal was filed by William Raveis Nantucket and Gowen in October.

Murray said that she and Ment never wanted to sue. They initially tried to work out a deal with William Raveis amicably, but those efforts were unsuccessful.

“After a period of time, Melanie [Gowen] just said there's nothing we can do,” Murray said. “The company said just sue them.”

At William Raveis’ request, Murray said, they sued.

William Raveis and Gowen have denied any wrongdoing. They claimed in their defense that they “breached no duty” to Murray and Ment, “made no alleged misrepresentations,” and that they “cannot be held liable for failing to disclose facts that were not known to them.”

“Alleged damages resulted from [Murray and Ment’s] own negligent acts and/or omissions, and therefore any recovery is barred or must be reduced proportionate to the extent of their contributory negligence and/or comparative fault,” their attorneys wrote in a legal filing. “Any alleged conduct of Defendants was not the proximate cause of Plaintiffs' alleged damages, which instead were the result of intervening and/or superseding causes for which Defendants are not responsible.”

In the judgment, the jury found that 65 percent of the defendants' damages resulted from Gowen’s negligence and 35 percent resulted from the defendants’ own negligence.

“We're busy people. I'm a doctor, I take care of women. My husband is a lawyer, he takes care of state troopers,” Murray said. “We take care of people. That's who we are. A frivolous lawsuit is not who we are.”

A little over $867,000 of the $1.3 million owed by William Raveis is for doubled damages. The rest is to cover various other expenses, including attorneys’ fees and interest.

“Realtors should read this and say, if I'm taking shortcuts, I shouldn't do that anymore. If I said I did something, and I didn't, that's really bad, and this could happen to me,” Murray said.

Nantucket property records indicate that Murray and Ment later sold the Polpis Road property for $1.95 million in 2021, grossing half a million in profit in addition to the money awarded by the court.

But Murray said that, after accounting for Land Bank fees, improvements, and mortgage payments paid toward the Polpis Road home, their actual profit was closer to $125,000. She added that she and Ment did not view the purchase as an investment.

“We felt like this is a place where everyone is happy,” she said. “We love the island, and it's a place that we all love to come together as a family, and it's rare that all your kids want to be together in the same place.”

Murray and Ment later purchased another house on Gardener Road for over $3 million, well outside their initial budget. By the time they had decided to buy a different home, Nantucket’s real estate market had accelerated dramatically, and there were no remaining properties in their price range.

“In 2021, when we started looking at houses [again], there was nothing at $1 million. Nothing. Everything was at least $2 million,” Murray said. “I don't feel good about the debt we have.”