contract of sale of goods

An unconditional contract of sale of goods which are specific and ready for deliver is sufficient to transfer the ownership without any delivery.

In this respect contracts of sale of goods are different from contracts for the sale of land.

It was held that there was a contract of sale of goods and that the sellers could sue for the outstanding balance of the price.

'Conditional' and 'Credit'are commonly used to describe contracts of sale of goods where the price is payable in instalments.

The Unfair Contract Terms Act applies to hire-purchase contracts in exactly the same way as it does to contracts of sale of goods.

If, on the other hand, the client selected from the artist's studio a finished painting and agreed to pay for it, that agreement would be a contract of sale of goods.

Contracts other than contracts of sale of goods, are not governed by the provisions of the Sale of Goods Act 1979.

Each of these is a type of contract of sale of goods and each has the characteristic that the buyer is committed to acquiring ownership of the goods.

Before the definition of a contract of sale of goods is 1-3 considered, something must be said of the history and sources of the law relating to sale of goods.

The Unfair Contract Terms Act applies, with one small difference, to hire contracts as it does to contracts of sale of goods, hire purchase, barter and exchange, etc.

This is not a contract of sale of goods because its principal object is the provision of services, Young & marten v. McManus Childs (1968) H.L.).

In Robinson v. Graves (1935) the Court of Appeal held that a contract whereby an artist agreed to paint a client's portrait for him was not a contract of sale of goods.

It is the hall mark of a contract of sale of goods that the parties enter into a mutual commitment that the buyer thereby acquires or shall acquire ownership of the goods.

Thus, a contract to sell crops which are growing or to be grown - whether they mature within a year (e.g. wheat) or not (e.g. timber)- is a contract of sale of goods.

The main purpose of a contract of sale of goods is that the buyer should become owner of the goods, Rowland v. Divall (1923 C.A. see paragraph 7-08 below).

Even though Pt II of SGA 1979 (ss2-15) is entitled "Formation of the Contract", there is nothing in it which regulates the actual formation of the contract of sale of goods.

It is worth setting out the definition in full: 2-(1) A contract of sale of goods is a contract by which the seller transfers or agrees to transfer the property in goods to the buyer for a money consideration, called the price.

The statutory terms (as to title, description, quality and sample) implied by sections 2-5 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 are dealt with in the same way as the corresponding terms implied in contracts of sale of goods.

There are certain other contracts which are not contracts of sale of goods but which are analogous contracts because the ownership of goods passes under them, e.g. contracts of exchange and barter and contracts for labour and materials supplied (see Chapter 8 above).

Absolute bills of sale, which do not represent any form of security whatsoever, are simply documents evidencing assignments, transfers and other assurances of personal chattels, which are substantially no more than mere contracts of sale of goods covered by the common law of contract and the sale of goods law.