Priest v Last: Implied Reliance and the Single-Purpose Article

Priest v Last [1903] 2 KB 148 establishes that where an article has one obvious purpose, the buyer makes that purpose known by the act of buying it, and reliance on the seller's skill and judgement is implied without anything being said.

It is the necessary counterpart to Griffiths v Peter Conway. Griffiths says that an unusual purpose must be disclosed; Priest v Last says that an obvious one need not be, and between them they fix the boundary of what fitness for purpose requires the buyer to communicate.

The facts

The claimant asked a chemist for a hot water bottle. He asked whether it would stand boiling water and was told it would not, but that it was made to hold hot water.

He bought it. His wife used it, and it burst on the fifth use, scalding her.

The seller's answer was that the buyer had not stated the purpose for which the bottle was required, so the implied term of fitness for purpose could not apply.

The decision

The Court of Appeal rejected that and held the seller liable.

A hot water bottle has one purpose. By asking for a hot water bottle the buyer made that purpose known, because no other purpose was conceivable and the seller could not have understood the request otherwise.

Reliance on the seller's skill and judgement was likewise implied. The buyer was a customer of a chemist's shop, without the means to assess the manufacture of a rubber article, and the transaction was of a kind in which buyers ordinarily rely on the seller.

The rule

Two propositions come out of it and both are still applied.

A single-purpose article communicates its own purpose. Where goods are capable of only one use, or of one use so dominant that nothing else is realistic, naming the goods names the purpose. A buyer asking for a hot water bottle, a kettle, a bicycle tyre or a fire extinguisher has stated the purpose by stating the article.

Reliance is implied in an ordinary retail transaction. Where a buyer without relevant expertise buys from a seller who deals in the goods, reliance follows from the circumstances. It need not be asserted and, in the ordinary case, need not be proved.

The modern statute reflects both. Section 14(3) requires the purpose to be made known "expressly or by implication", and provides that the term applies unless the circumstances show the buyer did not rely or that reliance was unreasonable — which places the burden on the seller to displace reliance, not on the buyer to establish it.

How it fits with Griffiths

The pair is the cleanest way to hold the rule in mind.

Priest v Last: the purpose was obvious, so it was communicated by implication, and the claim succeeded.

Griffiths v Peter Conway: the purpose was peculiar to the buyer, so it was not communicated at all, and the claim failed.

The rule that emerges is a single one. The buyer must make the purpose known, and how much saying that requires depends on how far the purpose departs from the obvious. Nothing is required where the article has one use; everything must be stated where the requirement is unusual; and the interesting cases sit between, where the goods have several ordinary uses and the buyer wanted one of them in particular.

That middle ground is where most modern disputes live. A general-purpose adhesive has many uses and no single obvious one, so a buyer wanting it for a specific material is closer to Griffiths than to Priest, and the claim depends on what was said at the counter.

Multi-purpose goods, and what follows

Where goods have a range of ordinary uses, two consequences follow, and they are worth separating.

Section 14(2) covers the whole range. Satisfactory quality requires fitness for all the purposes for which goods of that kind are commonly supplied. A product unfit for one of several normal uses fails the quality test without anything having been communicated.

Section 14(3) covers the specified one. If the buyer wanted a particular use among the several available, stating it engages the seller's skill and judgement on that use specifically, and the seller's silence or recommendation becomes part of the transaction.

The practical consequence is that a buyer with a specific requirement should state it even where the goods plainly could serve it, because the statement converts a general expectation into a particular one on which the seller has advised.

Where reliance is displaced

The statute allows the seller to escape by showing the buyer did not rely, or that reliance was unreasonable, and four situations recur.

The buyer specified precisely. A buyer who orders by part number, to a drawing, or against a written specification has told the seller what to supply rather than asked it to choose. The seller's skill and judgement were not engaged on suitability, only on supplying what was asked for.

The buyer is the expert. Where the buyer knows more about the application than the seller, and the seller knows this, reliance is hard to establish. This is the commercial analogue of the point that defeated the buyer in Harlingdon on a description claim.

The seller disclaimed knowledge honestly. A seller who says it does not know whether the goods will serve the stated purpose, and the buyer proceeds anyway, has displaced reliance on that point. This is different from an exclusion clause and is not subject to the same statutory control, because it goes to whether the term arises at all rather than to excluding one that has.

Partial reliance. Following Ashington Piggeries, reliance can be divided: the buyer relies on itself for the specification and on the seller for the materials and workmanship. This is the most common commercial position and is frequently mishandled, because it is stated as an all-or-nothing question when the section does not require that.

The two implied terms compared

Because Priest v Last is about fitness, it is worth setting the two limbs of section 14 side by side, since a well-advised claimant runs both.

Section 14(2), satisfactory quality. Requires a business seller. Needs no communication of anything. Covers the common purposes of goods of that kind, appearance, minor defects, safety and durability. Judged against price, description and the circumstances.

Section 14(3), fitness for a particular purpose. Requires a business seller. Requires the purpose to be made known, expressly or by implication. Requires reliance. Covers the specific use communicated.

Where the goods have one obvious purpose, the two overlap almost completely, which is why a hot water bottle that bursts fails both. The limbs separate where the buyer's use is unusual, where the goods have several ordinary uses, or where the complaint is about appearance or minor defects, which fall under quality alone.

The practical guidance for a problem question is to run both and say which does the work. A claim pleaded only under fitness, on facts where the goods would fail for anybody, has taken the harder route to the same result.

The age of the case, and why it survives

A 1903 decision on a rubber bottle might be expected to have been overtaken, and it has not, for two reasons.

The reasoning is about communication and not about goods, so it transfers to anything. The question of whether saying "I want X" also says "I want it for Y" does not depend on what X is.

And the statutory language has repeatedly re-enacted the substance. The words "expressly or by implication" carry Priest v Last, and each revision of the sale of goods legislation has retained them, with the Consumer Rights Act 2015 using the same formula for consumer contracts at section 10.

What has changed is the retail setting. The case assumes a conversation with a shopkeeper, and a great many purchases now involve no conversation at all. The implication of purpose survives — buying an item described as a hot water bottle still states the purpose — while the implication of reliance is harder to locate where there is no person to rely on. The likely answer is that reliance attaches to the seller's own description and listing, which is the only representation the buyer had.

How it is examined

The case appears wherever a seller argues that the buyer never said what the goods were for.

Establish what the article is and whether it has one obvious purpose. If it does, Priest v Last supplies the implication and the argument ends. If it has several, ask whether the buyer specified, and whether the complaint concerns a use within the ordinary range, which brings in section 14(2) independently.

Note also who suffered the loss. In Priest v Last the bottle burst on the claimant's wife, and the claim was the buyer's because the contract was his. Where the person injured is not the buyer, the contractual claim belongs to whoever contracted, and any claim by the injured person lies in tort or under product liability legislation — a distinction problem questions set deliberately.

Then address reliance, remembering that the statute puts the onus on the seller to show it was absent or unreasonable, and that a buyer with equal or greater expertise, or one who specified goods precisely by part number, is the case where that argument succeeds.