Sale of Goods Acts (with variations) regulate the sale of goods in several legal jurisdictions including Malaysia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the common law provinces of Canada.^[1]

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The Bill for an Act with this short title will have been known as a Sale of Goods Bill during its passage through the relevant legislative process.

Sale of Goods Acts may be a generic name either for legislation bearing that short title or for all legislation which relates to the sale of goods.

The sale of a good is usually undertaken between two main parties, such as a trader and a consumer. Business to consumer sales (B2C) arise when one party acts as a business and the other party receives the good for private use.^[2] Business to business (B2B) sales take place when both parties act as businesses and sell the good for non-consumer sale.^[2] Consumer to consumer (C2C) arise when neither party acts as a business entity.^[2] This classification may impact on the application of relevant legislation, for example in the United Kingdom, chapter 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 "applies to a contract for a trader to supply goods to a consumer" instead of the Sale of Goods Act 1979.^[3]

When a good is sold from party to party and the buyer becomes the owner, this is when they assume all the risks involved with the good. Even though the buyer is fully responsible for the good until they have paid the good in full, they still have duty to assume the loss or damage of the good. If the terms of ownership of risk are not defined by the parties, then the ‘default’ law of Sale of Goods applies.^[4] For example, for a specific good, the ownership is identifying when the good is in the delivery stage. Additionally, for unascertained goods, the ownership is passed until the good is identified and sent to the buyer. On the other hand, when there is a business to customer sale, the business still has the duty to assume the risk of the good until it is delivered and received by the customer.^[4]

Unascertained goods are goods for sale which are not specifically identified at the time of the contract of sale. For example, if I pay in advance for 50 litres of petrol to put into the tank of my car, at the time of the sale it would not be known which 50 litres from the seller's tanks would be the ones I would receive.

Rules relating to unascertained goods are often incorporated into sale of goods legislation, for example, section 16 of the UK's Sale of Goods Act 1979 and section 18 of the Sale of Goods Act, 1930 (Bangladesh), state that where there is a contract for the sale of unascertained goods, no property in the goods is transferred to the buyer unless and until goods are ascertained.^[10][11]

In the 1885 case of Inglis v Stock, a bulk consignment of sugar was shipped aboard the City of Dublin free on board (f.o.b.), and the whole consignment was lost after shipment. The seller subsequently appropriated the parts of the lost consignment to two separate contracts. Under f.o.b. commercial terms, the seller's obligation is to deliver to the ship, after which risk passes to the buyer, and therefore claims for the loss were lodged by the buyers, in this case by Inglis. A question about the insurer's obligation to pay was taken to court and resolved by the House of Lords. The legal issue was whether the respondent had, at the time of the loss, an insurable interest in the 390 tons of sugar. The House of Lords ruled that the sale was "FOB Hamburg", and therefore after shipment the sugar, even though part of an unascertained cargo, was at the risk of the respondent; he, therefore, had an insurable interest in the sugar and the underwriter was liable for the loss.^[12]

In the UK, the Sale of Goods (Amendment) Act 1995 amended the legal treatment of "unascertained goods forming part of an identified bulk",^[13] reflecting recommendations and a draft bill proposed by the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission in 1993.^[14]

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