The plaintiff claimed damages from the buyer for his failure to accept shares contracted to be taken on a particular date. Two months after that date the sellers began to re-sell the shares on a rising market.
Held: Damages for breach of contract such as a contract of sale are normally to be assessed as at the date of the breach. The profit accruing should not be deducted from the damages for non-acceptance.
Lord Wrenbury said: ‘The seller’s loss at the date of the breach was and remained the difference between contract price and market price at that date. When the buyer committed this breach the seller remained entitled to the shares, and became entitled to damages such as the law allows. The first of these two properties, namely, the shares, he kept for a time and subsequently sold them in a rising market. His pocket received benefit, but his loss at the date of the breach remained unaffected.’
Judges:
Lord Wrenbury
Citations:
[1916] 1 AC 175, [1915] UKPC 51
Links:
Jurisdiction:
Commonwealth
Cited by:
Cited – R Pagnan and Fratelli v Corbisa Industrial Agropacuaria Limitada CA 1970
Corbisa sold maize to Pagnan on cif terms, with extensions, the shipment period ended on 22 August 1965. The sellers failed to ship in time. On 21 September 1965 the parties met and the buyers agreed to accept a consignment on a named vessel if . .
Cited – Golden Strait Corporation v Nippon Yusen Kubishka Kaisha (‘The Golden Victory’) HL 28-Mar-2007
The claimant sought damages for repudiation of a charterparty. The charterpary had been intended to continue until 2005. The charterer repudiated the contract and that repudiation was accepted, but before the arbitrator could set his award, the Iraq . .
Cited – Bunge Sa v Nidera Bv SC 1-Jul-2015
The court considered the effect of the default clause in a standard form of contract which is widely used in the grain trade. On 10 June 2010 the respondents, Nidera BV, whom I shall call ‘the buyers’, entered into a contract with the appellants, . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contract
Updated: 06 July 2022; Ref: scu.242131
