ON THE LAW OF SALE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY; WITH REFERENCES TO THE AMERICAN DECISIONS AND TO THE FRENCH CODE AND CIVIL LAW. By J. P. BENJAMIN, Esq., Q. C. OF LINCOLN'S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. From the latest English Edition. WITH AMERICAN NOTES ENTIRELY RE-WRITTEN. BY EDMUND H. BENNETT, LL. D. DEAN OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL. STANFORD LIBRARY BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1888. Copyright, 1888, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 370009 The Riverside Press, Cambridge: PREFACE TO THIS EDITION. In preparing this edition from the latest English edition, the American law has been entirely re-written, and is presented in one continuous note at the end of each chapter, rather than in the detached, fragmentary manner heretofore used. The notes have not been swollen by long extracts from judicial opinions, and possibly the editor has erred in the other direction in not making a single quotation in the entire work. By this condensation, and the use of a larger page, this edition is presented in a more compact and convenient form than the last. The editor has not thought it necessary to cite every reported case upon familiar and well-settled propositions, but upon points unusually delicate, or not yet uniformly assented to, he has endeavored to present an exhaustive review of the American decisions. This has sometimes been done in chronological order, and sometimes by an alphabetical arrangement of the states. Instances may be found in the notes on Conditional Sales, p. 262; on Sales of Chattels not Specific, on p. 283; and some others. The most important English decisions published since the latest English edition have also been referred to in the notes. Special attention has also been given to the notes on Parties, p. 34; Mutual Assent, p. 70; Statute of Frauds, p. 99; Fraudulent Sales, p. 442; Illegality, p. 497; Conditions, p. 551; Warranty, p. 606; Delivery, p. 649; Stoppage in Transitu, p. 817, etc. The American notes may or may not be satisfactory to the reader, but they are the result of some honest personal work. For valuable assistance in correcting the citations, and preparing a new Index and Table of Cases, the undersigned is much indebted to his young friend, Mr. J. Albert Brackett, of Boston. BOSTON, January 1, 1888. EDMUND H. BENNETT. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. IF the well-known treatise of Mr. Justice Blackburn had been designed by its learned author to embrace the whole law on the subject of sale of goods, nothing further would now be needed by the practitioner than a new edition of that admirable work, incorporating the later statutes and decisions, so as to afford a connected view of the modifications necessarily introduced by lapse of time into the law of a contract so perpetually recurring as that of sale. But, unfortunately for the profession, Blackburn on Sale was intentionally restricted in its scope, and is confined to an examination of the effect of the contract only, and of the legal rights of property and possession in goods. This treatise is an attempt to develop the principles applicable to all branches of the subject, while following Blackburn on Sale as a model for guidance in the treatment of such topics as are embraced in that work. An effort has been made to afford some compensation for the imperfections of the attempt by references to American decisions, and to the authorities in the civil law, not elsewhere so readily accessible. TEMPLE, August, 1868. |