When is a Sale Made “In the Course of a Business”?

Abstract

In the days (not so long ago) when there were typewriters in solicitors' offices, there was much speculation whether the sale by a solicitor of a typewriter which was no longer required would be caught by the provisions in section 14 of the Sale of Goods Act that impose conditions as to quality and fitness upon a “business” seller. There was no real room for doubt so far as the original Act of 1893 was concerned, where the relevant subsections referred to goods “of a description which it is in the course of the seller's business to supply” (s. 14(1)) and to “a seller who deals in goods of that description” (s. 14(2)). Plainly, our solicitor was not within either subsection. But when section 14 was revised (and subsection (1) confusingly renumbered so that it became subsection (3)), these formulae were discarded and replaced by the wording: “Where the seller sells goods in the course of a business”–which is plainly wider. This reform was introduced by the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973 and later consolidated into the Sale of Goods Act 1979 that is currently in force. Remarkably, the scope of the new provision has not been the subject of any judicial consideration for over two decades; but the Court of Appeal has now given a firm ruling in Stevenson v. Rogers [1999] 1 All E.R. 613, with the consequence that any redundant typewriters disposed of by solicitors in the future will be deemed sold “in the course of a business”.