Legal advice: When the chips are down…
By thePublican.com's team of legal experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.
Picture it. You have ordered from your trusty suppliers 100 boxes of crisps. The bar is filling up and your thirsty customers fancy a tasty snack. What can only be described as shock and dismay ensues as each customer realises that their crisps are stale. Desperately, you scrabble for the crisp packets, only to note that each bag is well past its sell by date and on a closer look all the boxes are past their prime.
By way of apology you offer a compensatory drink... which is accepted. You, on the other hand have hundreds of bags of crisps which cannot be sold and you are looking for some compensation; but where to start?
First of all, try to hunt down the agreement which was made between you (hopefully you have something in writing) and your supplier. There should be provisions in the terms and conditions for such an occurrence. If there is a term which states that the supplier is happy to reimburse you for your loss then life is good....however, it's not always that simple and if your once-trusty supplier begins to debate any liability for your loss then where do you turn?
Fortunately, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (SGA) is in place and sections 13 and 14 state that the goods delivered must (1) comply with their description and (2) be of satisfactory quality.
Any attempt by the supplier to exclude these implied conditions will be caught by the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA). This applies to clauses which seek to restrict or exclude business liability. While such a clause would be ineffective against a consumer, to those involved in business the clause might be enforceable but only if it passes a reasonableness test. This test will expect the clause (in this case, the one excluding liability for the quality of the crisps) to be fair and reasonable having regard to the circumstances which were known to the parties involved. It would seem fair that a publican would expect crisps supplied to be edible!
There will be issues that are not so easy to resolve, which is why it is important to have a written contract is in place. You may not wish to make things too formal with suppliers, but it's better to know where you stand than to ruin a relationship when the chips are down.
