Section 13 of the Sale of Goods Act: Correspondence With Description

Section 13 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 implies a condition that, where goods are sold by description, they will correspond with that description. It is the shortest of the implied terms and the one whose scope has narrowed most since the Act was first passed.

Two questions decide every case on it. Was the sale one by description at all? And if so, which words formed part of the description, as opposed to being mere representations or statements of quality?

The requirements

A sale by description. Section 13(3) confirms that a sale can be by description even where the goods are on display and selected by the buyer, which disposes of the intuitive objection. Self-service purchases are sales by description.

The description must be part of the contract. Not every word said about goods becomes a term. The courts require that the description was relied on, in the sense of being influential in the sale, and this requirement has done most of the work of narrowing the section.

Correspondence is strict. Where both requirements are met, section 13 implies a condition, so any breach entitles the buyer to reject, subject to acceptance and to section 15A, which prevents a non-consumer buyer rejecting for a breach so slight that rejection would be unreasonable.

Which words count

The line runs between words that identify the goods and words that describe their quality.

Identifying words fix what the thing is: a 1961 Herald, Norwegian herring meal, a consignment of Grade A timber, 500 tonnes of a named specification. Words about condition, performance or excellence belong to section 14 instead.

Ashington Piggeries supplies the working test. Lord Diplock asked whether the departure from description meant a different kind of thing had been delivered, or a defective example of the right thing. Contaminated herring meal was still herring meal, so section 13 was not breached, and the buyer's claim succeeded under fitness for purpose instead.

The reason for the boundary is structural. If any quality defect breached the description, section 13 would absorb section 14 and the statutory distinction would collapse. Keeping section 13 to identity is what preserves the scheme.

How reliance narrowed the section

Harlingdon & Leinster Enterprises v Christopher Hull Fine Art [1991] is the case that established the limit.

A dealer sold a painting described in good faith as by Gabriele Münter. The buyer was itself a specialist in German expressionist work, had been told the seller knew nothing of the artist, inspected the painting and bought it. The painting was a forgery.

The Court of Appeal held the sale was not by description. The attribution had not been influential in the sale, because the buyer had relied on its own expertise. Where the buyer does not rely, the words are not part of the description and section 13 does not apply.

Set against Beale v Taylor [1967], where a private seller's advertisement described a car as a 1961 Herald and the buyer, having inspected it, recovered when the car turned out to be two vehicles welded together, the principle emerges clearly. Inspection does not defeat a description claim; absence of reliance does.

The practical question is therefore not whether the buyer looked, but whether the buyer was relying on the seller's words or substituting their own judgement.

The commercial-significance limit

A second narrowing came from Reardon Smith Line v Hansen-Tangen [1976], where the House of Lords declined to treat the yard number of a ship under construction as part of the description.

The reasoning was that the words must identify the commercial subject matter of the contract. A specification detail that makes no difference to what the buyer is commercially getting is not part of the description, however precisely it was stated.

This reversed a line of older authority, associated with cases such as Arcos v Ronaasen, under which a microscopic departure from a stated dimension breached the condition and permitted rejection. Those cases had allowed buyers to escape contracts they regretted for reasons unconnected with the deviation, and the modern position exists to stop that.

Section 15A now does similar work statutorily for non-consumer buyers, by removing the right to reject where the breach is slight.

Sale by sample, which sits alongside it

Section 15 implies a parallel set of terms where a sale is by sample: the bulk will correspond with the sample in quality, and the goods will be free from any defect making them unsatisfactory that would not be apparent on reasonable examination of the sample.

A sale is by sample only where the contract expressly or by implication makes it so. Showing a buyer an example during negotiation does not by itself create a sale by sample; the sample must have been intended to serve as the standard.

Two points matter where both sections are in play.

Section 13(2) requires that where the sale is by sample as well as by description, the bulk must correspond with the description too. A seller cannot rely on the goods matching the sample if they do not match what they were called, which stops the sample being used to displace the description.

And the exception for apparent defects cuts the other way from section 14. A defect that reasonable examination of the sample would have revealed is outside section 15, on the reasoning that the buyer had the opportunity to find it. The buyer who did not examine the sample is in a worse position than one who did badly, which is an odd result and is the settled reading.

Why the section matters less than it did

Three developments have reduced section 13 to a narrower role than it once held, and an answer that notes them is describing the law accurately.

The identity test confined it to what the goods are, removing every quality complaint to section 14.

The reliance requirement removed cases where the buyer brought their own expertise, which covers a substantial part of commercial trading.

The commercial-significance limit, reinforced by section 15A, removed the technical-breach cases where a buyer used a trivial deviation to escape a contract that had become unattractive for other reasons.

What remains is a section that does real work in private sales, in specification supply and where the buyer has not seen the goods, and very little elsewhere. That is a defensible position rather than a decline: the older law let section 13 do work the other sections were better suited to, and the narrowing put each complaint in the provision designed for it.

Exclusion

Under section 6 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, liability for breach of section 13 cannot be excluded against a person dealing as a consumer, and can be excluded against a non-consumer only if the term satisfies the reasonableness test.

This places section 13 in the same category as sections 14 and 15, and one category below section 12, where exclusion is prohibited outright regardless of the buyer's status.

Where it does the most work

Private sales. Section 14 requires a business seller, so a buyer from a private individual has section 13 and little else. This is why the section matters disproportionately in second-hand vehicle and equipment markets.

Specification contracts. Where goods are supplied to a written specification, the specification is the description, and a departure from it is a section 13 question instead of a quality question — which matters because the remedies and the exclusion rules differ.

Distance and sample sales. Where the buyer has not seen the goods, the description is all there is. Section 15 adds the parallel requirement for sale by sample, and where a sale is by both description and sample, section 13(2) requires the bulk to correspond with both, not merely with the sample.

Description and misrepresentation, which overlap

A statement about goods can be both a term of the contract and a misrepresentation, and the claimant chooses which to run.

The distinction is that a term is a promise, breach of which gives contractual remedies; a misrepresentation is a false statement of fact inducing the contract, which gives rescission and damages under the Misrepresentation Act 1967. A description that becomes part of the contract under section 13 is a term, and the same words may also have induced the contract.

Two practical differences decide the choice.

Remedy. Breach of the section 13 condition gives the right to reject and to damages for loss of bargain. Rescission for misrepresentation returns the parties to their pre-contractual positions and is barred by affirmation, lapse of time and by third-party rights, so it is frequently unavailable by the time the problem surfaces.

Fault. Section 13 is strict, so the seller's honesty is irrelevant. Under the Misrepresentation Act the seller escapes damages by proving reasonable belief in the truth of the statement, which is a defence the contractual claim does not admit.

The practical consequence is that a claimant with a clear section 13 case runs it, and reaches for misrepresentation where the statement was influential but did not become a term — the position the buyer in Harlingdon was left in.

How it is examined

The sequence that works is short and is applied in order.

Establish that the sale was by description, noting section 13(3) if the buyer inspected. Identify the specific words said to form the description, and separate identifying words from quality words. Address reliance explicitly, because Harlingdon makes it contestable and because a strong answer distinguishes it from inspection. Apply the identity test from Ashington Piggeries. Then consider the remedy, including section 15A for a non-consumer buyer and the loss of the right to reject through acceptance.

The two recurring errors are running a quality complaint under section 13, which the identity test defeats, and treating inspection as fatal to the claim, which Beale v Taylor disproves. An answer that names both and explains why neither applies has covered the ground the question is testing.