Question

1. Read the following scenario and answer the question in 5-10 sentences.

You work for a company in Washington state that sells sports equipment. On June 14, you supervised the placement of several boxes of your equipment on to a Quick Delivery truck for shipment to a customer in Maryland. Your equipment was destroyed when the driver of that truck fell asleep at the wheel and crashed on June 17. You have pulled the contract for the sale of those goods. It was signed on June 11. The contract states clearly that title to the goods will pass to the buyer as soon as the goods are pulled from the warehouse. The contract does not specifically address risk of loss. It does state that the goods will be shipped by a commercial carrier. The customer has called and asked you to ship another shipment of goods at your cost. Justify your position that the risk of loss falls on the buyer of the goods.

Answer 1

As the contract of sale was signed on June 11, while the incident happened on June 17 after the goods were shipped. As per the law, if the contract clause specifically explaining the risk of loss has not been mentioned the loss has to be incurred by the buyer. In this case, on June 14, the shipment was supervised and shipped on the Quick delivery truck which is commercial carrier. As mentioned in contract, goods must be shipped by commercial carrier, which was taken care by the company. The equipment were not intentionally damages, as it happened due to carelessness of the driver who fell asleep at wheel. In the contract, title of the goods will pass to the buyer as soon as the goods are pulled from the warehouse of the seller was mentioned, where the goods were pulled from the warehouse on June 14, at that time the title of goods was passed to buyer and seller has no responsibility for any risk that would occur during the delivery process, therefore the risk will fall on the buyer of the goods and company is not liable to ship another equipment at the companies cost.