Sale of goods, contracts etc

[Tom K]

Not really Gary if they were within the system that R.S had attempted to order from he would have been in possesion of it days ago.
Incidently Jake the invoice reads Router £98.98 and the equivalent is a £98.98 router with similar spec.

Regards Tom

 

[Jake]

Not really Gary if they were within the system that R.S had attempted to order from he would have been in possesion of it days ago.
Incidently Jake the invoice reads Router £98.98 and the equivelent is a £98.98 router with similar spec.

Regards Tom

I am getting thoroughly bored of this and it seems a bit pointless, but if you go to a Rolls Royce dealer and hand over your £200k and the bloke is a bit lazy and writes "car, £200k" on the invoice, do you think the contract is reduced to any old banger, price £200k?

 

[Tom K]

Jake, that has no bearing on what we are discussing.
For all your points of law what would Roger use for evidence if he still has it his original invoice that says Router £98.98 and try to convince the bench that a hundred pound router isnt a hundred pound router.
Regards Tom

 

[Jake]

He won't have a great deal of difficulty with that as if they claim that he can ask for disclosure of the computer records which will show the order number for the triton. Even if he doesn't give that, he can serve some one paragraph witness statements backing up up what they were selling off at the time at what price, and/or he can print off any number of posts on here, and indeed his own contemporaneous posts on here which show the consistency of his story.

B&Q are unlikely to pretend otherwise, unless their manager and staff are of a particularly deceitful bent - most people spin the truth, but remarkably few make stuff up completely and the manager or whoever (assuming that he is that dishonest) would have to co-ordinate several people lying. Their lawyer would pay up immediately if he sensed something fishy, as the potential scandal wouldn't be worth the price.

Give it up. Just say you don't want Roger to sue Aunty B&Q and be done with it - that's fine, after all.

 

[Tom K]

Jake the computer records and posts on here say a Triton router is worth £98.98 or less!

Regards Tom

 

[Slim]

The Triton is worth whatever Roger can get it for from another company.

 

[Jake]

Brick wall, thank you Slim.

 

[Anonymous]

. Even if he doesn't give that, he can serve some one paragraph witness statements backing up up what they were selling off at the time at what price, and/or he can print off any number of posts on here, and indeed his own contemporaneous posts on here which show the consistency of his story. .

Jake
Surely that is all heresy and would not be considered evidence?
I ask this in all honesty as I know you are a lawyer, but it seems to me common sense that what is written on an internet forum is not worth the paper it is printed on when presented in a court of law?

 

[Tom K]

The Triton is worth whatever Roger can get it for from another company.

Gosh thats clever so if he can manage to buy it for double retail instead of half retail as he had hoped he can make a substantial profit!
Obviously B&Q couldn't show that it was available for sale as recently as yesterday for £98.98 could it.

Wheres your brick wall?

Regards Tom

 

[Slim]

Gosh thats clever so if he can manage to buy it for double retail instead of half retail as he had hoped he can make a substantial profit!

Tom, you are just not getting this.

Even if Roger paid twice thr retail price, he would not make a penny profit. Say he got it for £200. The damages he would be awarded by the court would be £100.02, which is the extra he has had to spend.

 

[Tom K]

Slim, I get it perfectly you have been able to buy these routers for weeks at £98.98 you just couldn't and certainly can't order one through B&Q's pick from stock system. Roger even suspected that according to his early posts .
You can however buy one from various stores up and down the country there was nothing stopping him from taking his hard earned pennies to any of these stores and purchasing the object of his desire just like all the happy bunnies on the forum.
The value of any item amounts to what a person is willing to pay for it but don't believe for a minute that the court won't accept the value of that item to be £98.98 when they are given all the sales figures that show that to be the case.

By the way they are sold by Triton for 184.85 so twice retail would be 369.78

Regards Tom

 

[NeilO]

tommo wrote

By the way they are sold by Triton for 184.85 so twice retail would be 369.78

What Slim is trying to tell you is , if RS purchased a Triton for £300.00 the court would award him £201.02 in compensation, this being the difference B&Q charged RS in the first place £98.98.
he would not make a profit on anything has he would have already paid out £300.00 to purchase the replacement B&Q could/would not supply.

Tommo also wrote

The value of any item amounts to what a person is willing to pay for it but don't believe for a minute that the court won't accept the value of that item to be £98.98 when they are given all the sales figures that show that to be the case.

thats where compensation comes in , you are contractually promised goods at a certain price, but have to buy them elsewhere at a greater price, the compensation will be disproportionate? to the amount you had to pay as opposed to the price you were promised.

 

[Tom K]

Neil, I don't require an explanation my point is they will only award the difference in cost if you can show it to be reasonable. As the item has still been available at the reduced cost and obviously B&Q could provide evidence of this he wouldn't be awarded anything.

Regards Tom

 

[NeilO]

Tom , I partially agree with you, but I think the court will see it for what it is.
if RS has/had to buy the router from another supplier at a greater expense, and can prove it, the court should provide him with compensation..

if the item is available at B&Q , why cant they simply have it delivered to Roger, wherever it originates its still B&Q`s property

 

[Slim]

Neil, I don't require an explanation my point is they will only award the difference in cost if you can show it to be reasonable.

The court is only concerned with the extra Roger will have paid in order to get the router. This extra is the damages suffered as a result of B&Q breaching the contract. If Roger has had to pay full price then so be it. I think you are getting confused between the Sale of Goods Act and contract law.

 

[Tom K]

Slim, a very strange judicial system where the Judge doesn't ask questions certainly not something I have ever come across.

Regards Tom

 

[Slim]

Slim, a very strange judicial system where the Judge doesn't ask questions certainly not something I have ever come across.

Where did I say that?

Oh I give up. You seem determined to disagree with whatever is posted in this thread. You would not even take the advice of a lawyer. You think what you want, your opininion is inconsequential anyway.

 

[Jake]

Jake
Surely that is all heresy and would not be considered evidence?

I assume you mean hearsay, rather than heresy? :lol:

If so, there is no rule against admitting hearsay evidence in a civil case, only in criminal matters. In a civil court hearsay evidence is admissable, and the fact that it is hearsay affects only the weight given to it, so the judge will look at it with a critical eye as to its credibility, but that does not mean it will be ignored if the judge concludes that it is credible.

If it came down to an issue being decided where there was just a piece of hearsay evidence on one side against just a piece of first-hand witness evidence on the other, all things being equal the latter would be given more weight. That's as far it goes.

I ask this in all honesty as I know you are a lawyer, but it seems to me common sense that what is written on an internet forum is not worth the paper it is printed on when presented in a court of law?

Why do you say that?

If I was a judge, faced with a claim where Roger said the receipt he has was for a Triton router which he had heard on a internet forum was on sale at the time and which he'd then asked B&Q to order for him, and B&Q were saying it was a receipt for any old £98 router (which is the basis of Tommo's rather ridiculous postulation which we are discussing), I would be very interested in seeing the posts on here to show that people (especially those not connected with Roger) were in fact reporting at and before the time of the events that the Triton was on sale at £98 and that people generally were very keen on finding them at that price.
Those posts are not hearsay evidence, by the way. They are documents recording first hand experiences. Almost better evidence than a witness statement in many ways, as Roger simply couldn't have made all the fuss on here up, could he?

That means that the posts are relevant to Roger's credibility as well, as his story hinges on him being so interested in purchasing the Triton at the sale price that he went and asked B&Q if they could order him one. The presence of the posts about the sale price routers bolsters that part of his story. If you look, you might even find Roger corroborates his story by expressing an interest in a post written before he went to B&Q and placed the order. That would be very good, persuasive documentary evidence.

I might also be interested in seeing the first few posts of this thread, to see whether Roger was consistent in his story. I wouldn't give the latter much if any positive weight in terms of proving his case because they are after the event - his sworn witness statement would set out his after-the-event version of events in a more authoritative form.

But, as we are assuming that B&Q is running Tommo's far-fetched defence that the receipt was for any old £98 router, B&Q's defence is therefore that Roger is making up his story about the £98 sale Tritons existing at all, his wish to buy one, and his request that they order one in for him. In those circumstances (which is what we are discussing) I would be very interested in seeing what Roger wrote at the time, to see if it was consistent with his story in court. If it was consistent, that would add a degree of credibility to Roger's testimony. If it was inconsistent, it would sink him.

This is all based on Tommo's "B&Q lie completely in court" defence, which I think is unlikely, and really rather offensive to B&Q, its staff, and its lawyers.

 

[Jake]

Neil, I don't require an explanation my point is they will only award the difference in cost if you can show it to be reasonable. As the item has still been available at the reduced cost and obviously B&Q could provide evidence of this he wouldn't be awarded anything.

There's half a point here for a change, but it is still a bad one.

B&Q, given that they have refused to transfer a router from another store to fulfill the contract, cannot argue that Roger should have to traipse around its nationwide chain to locate one of the remaining routers himself in order to mitigate his losses. That turns the duty under the contract on its head.

Roger is obliged to take reasonable steps to mitigate his losses - to make them as small as possible. So, he can't go out and spend £300 on a Triton, if he knows they are readily available locally to him at £200. But, how far he is expected to waste his time looking for the very best deal is a matter of degree, and it would not include visiting innumerable B&Qs to track down the last elusive bits of stock.

He is entitled to charge for his costs of acquiring the replacement - time (if he can put a value on it) petrol (over and above the return trip to B&Q he would have had to make), etc, that's all part of the damage he's suffered. So if he had gone on the nationwide trek you are suggesting, he is likely to end up increasing his damages rather than reducing them, even if he ended up finding one at £98.

I haven't checked the authorities, but I would be very surprised if the wronged party is obliged to spend any more money with a contract breaker in order to mitigate the losses incurred by reason of that same contract-breaker breaking the contract. If that's right, B&Q's prices would be irrelevant anyway.

 

[Anonymous]

I assume you mean hearsay, rather than heresy? :lol:

either is fine

I ask this in all honesty as I know you are a lawyer, but it seems to me common sense that what is written on an internet forum is not worth the paper it is printed on when presented in a court of law?

Why do you say that?

Only trying to make that point that I was genuinely interested in your view, not just 'making my own point'