25. Security interests in property

This chapter is concerned with limited rights over property that enable a person who is owed a personal obligation by someone with ownership of an asset to exercise powers over that asset, should the personal obligation not be fulfilled. These limited rights are known as ‘security interests’—their effect is to provide additional remedies in the event of breach of the personal obligation and so make performance more secure. The chapter assumes that the obligation secured is a debt, but there is no reason why security cannot be taken in order to secure any obligation. It introduces the types of security interest, and considers the essential elements of their creation and the steps that may be necessary in order for the interest to have priority over competing claims to the secured property.

21. Contracts of carriage of goods by sea

This chapter discusses situations wherein the shipper will only form a contract to book space on a ship. In such a case, the person requiring the goods to be carried, called the ‘shipper’, enters into a contract of carriage of the goods with the person having possession and control of the ship, the ‘carrier’. The carrier need not have title to an absolute interest in the ship; he or she may be a charterer having at most only possessory title, and the shipper may well pass his or her rights in the goods along with his or her rights against the carrier to a third party. Although the terms ‘shipper’ and ‘carrier’ are used here, the parties concerned would often be more accurately described as the ‘cargo interests’ and the ‘ship interests’.

14. Delivery and payment

This chapter considers the duty of the seller to deliver the goods and the duty of the buyer to accept the goods and to pay the price. Payment and delivery are concurrent conditions in a contract of sale. This means that the seller must be ready and willing to deliver the goods, and the buyer must be ready and willing to pay for them in accordance with the terms of the contract. The parties to the contract can make whatever agreement they want in respect of delivery and payment and, in practice, will often do so in relation to the time, place, and manner of the delivery and the payment. Where the parties have not agreed on these matters, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (SGA 1979) lays down certain rules, which are discussed in detail in the chapter. Similar rules apply to consumer sales under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

13. Perishing of goods

This chapter considers the effect on the parties’ contract of sale in the event that the goods perish. Before doing so, it considers briefly the position of non-existent goods. It might be considered sensible to think that where the seller sells specific goods, a condition would be implied that the goods existed at the time of the making of the contract and that the seller would be liable to the buyer if he sold goods that did not exist. The seller, after all, does warrant that he or she has the right to sell the goods and, where he or she sells the goods in the course of a business, also warrants that they are of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose. However, such a seller is generally not liable.

16. The remedies of the seller

This chapter considers the remedies available to a seller if the buyer fails to pay for the goods pursuant to a contract of sale. It should be noted at the outset that the term ‘seller’ also includes ‘any person who is in the position of a seller, such as an agent of the seller to whom a bill of lading has been indorsed, or a consignor or agent who has himself paid (or is directly responsible for) the price’. This is of particular assistance to an agent who, having paid the price to the seller with the intention of recovering the money from the buyer, will have the same protection afforded to unpaid sellers as if he or she were the seller directly.

12. The transfer of title

This chapter considers the various circumstances in which a buyer may become the owner of the goods, notwithstanding that the seller is neither the owner of them, nor sold them with the owner’s consent. In the chapter, disputes concern not the seller but the owner of the goods and the buyer. The chapter presents a case that provides an example of the sort of problems which can arise in such disputes. A common theme in these types of cases is dishonesty, whereby the court will have to decide which of two innocent parties should suffer due to the dishonesty of another. This can arise in many different situations, such as where an innocent buyer buys goods from a seller who turns out to have stolen them or where a person obtains goods on hire purchase and dishonestly sells them before they have been paid for.

26. Forms of title-based financing

This chapter examines the ways in which goods and things in action can be dealt with to facilitate the financing of business. It begins with a brief survey of the financing mechanisms available to businesses and proceeds to discuss receivables financing, whereby a succession of debts owed to a business can either be sold outright or subjected to a security interest in favour of a financier, focusing specifically on outright sale. The chapter also discusses how the fact that title to an asset can be split between an ‘owner’ and a person with physical possession of it can be used to advantage in providing flexibility and tax advantages in financing the acquisition of capital items for use in a business.

24. Documentary payments

This chapter is divided into two main parts. First, it aims to provide an introduction to the concept of an important piece of property called an instrument, principally by focusing on one specific example: the bill of exchange. Second, the chapter considers a bank payment mechanism called the letter of credit, especially in conjunction with bills of exchange. Bills of exchange, of which cheques are a particular type, although declining in importance in domestic sales, remain important in international sales. While bills of exchange are not the only instruments, and letters of credit are not the only mechanism supporting the financing of international trade, focusing on these two important commercial documents makes it possible to obtain a good understanding of the types of legal issues involved in documentary payments.

20. International trade terms

This chapter begins with an introduction to trade terms, discusses in detail contracts at common law, with a specific focus on the passing of property and risk in the goods, and concludes with a look at the attempts by the International Chamber of Commerce to standardize and clarify the meaning of these terms. Trade terms provide a mechanism whereby buyers and sellers of goods can conveniently express their intentions. So far as they are concerned, the key issue is the allocation of the cost of transportation of the goods from the seller to the buyer, but to the lawyer, more important are the issues of when risk and property in the goods pass, and when delivery is made.

18. Product liability

Product liability is concerned with circumstances where a product has been supplied and causes damage by virtue of some characteristic that might be described as a defect. The main source of law in this area lies in relation to contracts for the sale of goods, where normally the relationship between a buyer and a seller will be regulated by their contractual arrangements, including any valid exclusion clauses. Problems arise however, even in relation to actions by buyers against sellers where the seller is, for example, insolvent or untraceable, or perhaps where he is protected from contractual liability by an exclusion clause. Further, the defective goods may not only injure the buyer, and the contract is unlikely to provide a remedy for potential claimants not party to the contract of supply, since it must be comparatively rare for such a person to derive any benefit from the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. In such circumstances a claimant, whether buyer or not, will be forced to rely on the law of tort or on statute for a remedy. This chapter examines such claims.