Continuing relevance of the Sale of Goods Act

Contributed by Ian Macdonald and Su Mahalingham and current to 1 September 2005

Because there is a substantial duplication of the Sale of Goods Act’s implied obligations by the TPA and Fair Trading Act, one might well ask why the Sale of Goods Act’s implied obligations still operate?

Clearly they really do not add anything more to the obligations implied by the TPA and Fair Trading Acts, and indeed provide less because they can be taken away. However, there are certain transactions to which the TPA and Fair Trading Acts do not apply. These transactions would be:

• transactions undertaken by auctions;
• transactions between a private seller and a consumer;
• transactions for business-type goods over $40,000.

In each of these circumstances, it may be necessary to use the implied obligations in the Sale of Goods Act to give the consumer a remedy (assuming that the implied obligations had not been taken away under Section 54).