Griffiths v Peter Conway: Abnormal Sensitivity and Fitness Limits

Griffiths v Peter Conway Ltd [1939] 1 All ER 685 decides what happens when goods are perfectly satisfactory for everyone except the buyer. The answer is that the buyer bears the loss, unless the peculiarity was disclosed.

It is a short case with a clear rule, and it is worth studying because the rule appears obvious and its boundary is not.

The facts

The claimant bought a Harris tweed coat, made to measure. She contracted dermatitis from wearing it.

The evidence was that her skin was abnormally sensitive, and that the coat would not have harmed a person with normal skin. She had not told the seller about her sensitivity.

She sued under what is now section 14(3), the implied term of fitness for a particular purpose.

The decision

The claim failed.

Fitness for a particular purpose requires the buyer to make the purpose known to the seller, expressly or by implication, and to rely on the seller's skill and judgement. Where goods fail only because of an abnormality in the buyer that the seller did not know about, the purpose the buyer actually had was never communicated.

The Court's reasoning was that the coat was fit for the purpose of being worn by a person with normal skin, which is the only purpose the seller could have understood. The particular purpose — being worn by someone with this sensitivity — had not been made known, so section 14(3) was not engaged.

The rule, stated carefully

The principle is not that a seller escapes liability whenever the buyer is unusual. It is narrower and turns on communication.

Where the purpose is ordinary, making it known is automatic. A buyer of a coat need not say that they intend to wear it; the purpose is obvious from the goods.

Where the purpose is special, the buyer must say so. Anything outside the ordinary range of use requires disclosure, because the seller cannot exercise skill and judgement on a requirement it does not know exists.

An abnormality in the buyer is a special purpose. Sensitivity, an unusual operating environment, a non-standard application, an intended use the goods are not commonly supplied for — all of these place the requirement on the buyer to disclose.

The burden therefore sits where the information is. The buyer knows about their own sensitivity and the seller does not, and the rule allocates the risk to the party who could have removed it cheaply by mentioning it.

How far the rule reaches

The case is regularly cited beyond skin conditions, and the transferable form is about undisclosed conditions of use.

A machine sold for general industrial use that fails in an unusually corrosive atmosphere, a lubricant that degrades at a temperature outside the normal range, a component that fails under a duty cycle the buyer never described — each is the same structure, and the buyer's claim fails for the same reason.

What the case does not cover is the buyer who did disclose. Where the unusual requirement was communicated, the seller is squarely within section 14(3), and the fact that the requirement is unusual is precisely why reliance on the seller's judgement is reasonable.

Against Ashington Piggeries

The two cases look similar and reach opposite outcomes, which makes the pair a standard examination comparison.

In Ashington Piggeries, mink feed poisoned mink. The buyer supplied the formula and the seller supplied the ingredients. The buyer succeeded, because the House of Lords held that reliance can be partial: the buyer relied on itself for the formula and on the seller for the soundness of what went into it.

In Griffiths, the buyer's own characteristic caused the loss and had not been mentioned at all.

The distinction is disclosure and the division of expertise. In Ashington Piggeries the seller knew the feed was for mink and was answerable for the part of the transaction within its competence. In Griffiths the seller knew nothing that would have led it to do anything differently.

Stated as a test: ask what the seller could have done with the information it had. Where better information would have changed the seller's conduct and the buyer withheld it, the loss stays with the buyer.

What section 14(2) does separately

An important limit is that Griffiths concerns fitness for a particular purpose. Satisfactory quality under section 14(2) is a separate claim with different requirements and no need for any communication.

Goods that would harm any user are not of satisfactory quality, and the buyer's sensitivity is irrelevant to that claim. A coat treated with a chemical that irritates normal skin fails section 14(2) whether or not the buyer said anything.

The practical consequence for a problem question is that the two claims must be pleaded and analysed separately. A defect that affects everyone is a quality claim; a failure that affects only this buyer is a fitness claim and runs into Griffiths.

The two elements the section still requires

Griffiths turns on the first of two requirements, and answers frequently stop there when the second is also in issue.

Making the purpose known. Express statement is the clearest route. Implication covers the ordinary purpose of ordinary goods and extends further where the circumstances make the use obvious — a buyer who tells a supplier the name of the machine the part is for has made the purpose known by implication.

Reliance on the seller's skill and judgement. The buyer must actually rely, and the reliance must be reasonable. This is presumed in most retail transactions and is contested in commercial ones, particularly where the buyer is the more expert party or specified the goods precisely.

The second requirement fails in a different set of cases from the first. A buyer who states an unusual purpose and then selects the goods themselves by part number has communicated the purpose and not relied on the seller, and the claim fails for that reason rather than on Griffiths.

Section 14(3) itself says the term does not apply where the circumstances show that the buyer did not rely, or that it was unreasonable to rely, on the seller's skill and judgement — so the point is statutory instead of a gloss.

Why the rule is defensible

The allocation looks harsh on the facts of the case and is the right one on the reasoning.

The seller had no way of discovering the sensitivity. No inspection, no testing and no expertise would have revealed it, because the relevant fact was about the buyer, not about the goods. A rule imposing liability regardless would require sellers to insure against characteristics they cannot observe, and the cost would be recovered from every buyer through the price.

The buyer, by contrast, knew, and could have removed the entire risk with one sentence. Where one party holds the information cheaply and the other cannot obtain it at any price, allocating the loss to the informed party is the standard efficient result, and it is what the section does.

The reasoning transfers directly to commercial supply. A buyer with an unusual operating environment who says nothing is asking the seller to guarantee against an unknown, and the price paid reflected no such guarantee.

Where the rule sits today

The principle is undisturbed and appears in the modern statute in the same terms. Section 14(3) of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and section 10 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 both require the particular purpose to have been made known, expressly or by implication.

The consumer statute has not softened it. A consumer with an unusual requirement must still communicate it, and the reason is the same: the trader can only take account of what it has been told.

What has changed is the ease of disclosure. Where goods are bought through an interface with no conversation, the opportunity to state a special purpose may not exist, and it is an open question how the requirement of implied communication operates where there is nobody to communicate with. A seller's own product information can create the implication — a listing describing goods as suitable for a particular use makes that use known by implication — but the buyer with an unusual requirement and no route to state it is in a position the case law did not anticipate. The likely resolution is that the implication is read from what the listing itself claims, which puts the risk back on a seller that described the goods broadly, and leaves the silent buyer with the unusual need exactly where Griffiths left her.

How it is examined

Griffiths appears wherever goods worked for others and failed for this buyer.

Establish whether the purpose was ordinary or special. If special, ask whether it was communicated, expressly or by implication. If it was not, section 14(3) fails on Griffiths. Then check section 14(2) separately, because a defect affecting all users survives the Griffiths point entirely.

Where the facts leave it genuinely unclear whether the buyer disclosed, argue both ways and say which is more likely on the evidence given. Disclosure is a question of fact, and a problem question that leaves it ambiguous is usually testing whether the candidate notices that it decides the case.

The error to avoid is treating the case as authority that unusual buyers never recover. The rule is about disclosure, and a buyer who disclosed is in the opposite position.