There's a saying in M&A: if you're reading the contract you've already lost. For anything that is not open-and-shut (sure, sue the seller if they literally ran

There's a saying in M&A: if you're reading the contract you've already lost. For anything that is not open-and-shut (sure, sue the seller if they literally ran away with the earnest money), your specific wording is not going to be worth litigating. Most offers in the US are truly boilerplate, the text being provided by an association of real estate agents, and the wording is not customizable. This of course does depend on your state. Contracts aren't worth much more than the paper they're on if you're not willing to litigate, and there's precious few cases where you'd want to. Most of the time you should just resolve your dispute by blowing up the transaction. Speaking from experience and having hired the lawyers to originally draft things, you really have no other remedy if the other party really wants to breach.