ABSTRACT
The mutual expectations of the parties under a contract of sale are (1) on the part of the buyer that he will acquire title to conforming goods in due time, and (2) on the part of the seller that the buyer will duly pay the price. Where the seller becomes entitled to claim the price from the buyer (s. 49), his whole ‘expectation interest’ 75 is thereby protected: moreover he has a number of expeditious ‘real remedies’ such as his Hen over the goods to secure payment. By contrast, the buyer is not so well served. The equivalent of the seller’s action for the price would be an order for specific delivery of conforming goods. In practice this is very seldom awarded. The buyer’s remedy for defective performance is characteristically damages. The provisions governing the award of damages to buyers and sellers were derived almost entirely from commercial cases. The expectation interest they protect (albeit imperfectly), is that of the market. The market may not, however, truly represent a consumer’s interest under a contract of sale. He may well have an interest in the particular goods over and above that represented by the difference between the contract price and the market price. Economists call this ‘consumer surplus’.
