ABSTRACT
In Maple Flock Co Ltd v Universal furniture Products (1934), M contracted to sell U 100 tons of flock to be delivered at the rate of three loads per week as required. After delivery of 18 loads U wrote to M stating that they would accept no further deliveries. The ground for doing this was that the 16th load had been analysed and had been found to contain a chlorine content of over eight times the government standard. Held: the buyers were not entitled to refuse to accept further deliveries under the contract. Whether U were entitled to refuse to continue with the contract on the basis of one defective load depended on the application of two tests. The first test is the ratio, quantitatively, which the breach bears to the contract as a whole. The second test is the degree of probability or improbability that the breach will be repeated. Applying the first test, the court clearly did not regard a defective one-and-a-half tons out of a contract for 100 tons to be a very high ratio. On the second test, the court pointed out that there had been 20 satisfactory deliveries both before and after the delivery objected to and that there was no indication that there was anything wrong with any of the other deliveries. The court was of the opinion that the breach was an isolated instance and unlikely to be repeated.
