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Legal Ownership Of The Goods

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I. Legal ownership of the goods Ownership is a very difficult concept to define, but the primary purpose of the contract for the sale of goods is to transfer ownership of the goods from the seller to the buyer. There is a set of rules that regulate how this is to be done. The primary rule is laid out in Section 16 of the Sales of Goods Act 1979 , which provides that “where there is a contract for the sale of unascertained goods, no property in the goods is transferred to the buyer unless and until the goods are ascertained”. In short, this means that the goods must be identified for property to be transferred. Section 17 stipulates that where the goods are specific or ascertained, the property in them will be transferred to the buyer at the time the parties to the contract intend it to be transferred . It is generally specified in the contract when this will be, if it is not attention should be paid to the conduct of the parties and the circumstances of the case . Section 18 lays down three rules, the first one being that where the contract is unconditional the ownership of the goods will pass to the buyer when the contract is made. This is, however, fairly rare as RV Ward v Bignall demonstrates that in our modern society not a lot of evidence is required to support the inference that ownership was to pass at a later stage. Secondly, where the seller is bound by the contract to do something to the goods for the purpose of putting them into a deliverable state, the

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