UNCITRAL Digest of Article 30 case law

DIGEST OF ARTICLE 30 CASE LAW

Meaning and purpose of the provision

1. Article 30 states and summarises the main duties which the seller is obliged to fulfil. The seller, however, is equally bound to perform any additional obligation provided for in the contract or by any usage or practice between the parties, such as a contractual duty to deliver exclusively to the buyer.[1]

Obligation to deliver

2. The seller is obliged to deliver the goods. In several instances the parties specified the duty to deliver the goods by using one of the Incoterms which then prevails over the rules of the Convention.[2]

Obligation to hand over documents

3. The Convention obliges the seller to hand over the documents concerning the goods but does not itself establish a duty of the seller to issue certain documents on the goods.

Obligation to transfer property

4. Although the Convention "is not concerned with the effect which the contract may have on the property in the goods sold" (art. 4(b)), the seller’s principal obligation is to transfer the property of the goods sold to the buyer. Whether such effect has been achieved and whether property passed is not a question governed by the Convention but has to be determined according to the law designated by the rules of private international law of the forum. Also the effect of a retention of title clause on the property in the goods is not a matter governed by the Convention,[3] rather, the law designated by the rules of private international law of the forum applies. However, one court stated that whether such clause has been validly agreed upon in the sales contract and whether an alleged retention of title constitutes a breach of contract has to be determined according to the rules of the Convention.[4]

Other obligations

5. The Convention itself provides for further obligations imposed upon the seller not mentioned in article 30, such as those arising out of Chapter V (arts. 71-88), that relates to obligations common to the buyer and the seller. Additional obligations may also derive from usages or practices established between the parties (art. 9).

FOOTNOTES

* The present text was prepared using the full text of the decisions cited in the Case Law on UNCITRAL Texts (CLOUT) abstracts and other citations listed in the footnotes. The abstracts are intended to serve only as summaries of the underlying decisions and may not reflect all the points made in the digest. Readers are advised to consult the full texts of the listed court and arbitral decisions rather than relying solely on the CLOUT abstracts.

[Citations to cisgw3 case presentations have been substituted [in brackets] for the case citations provided in the UNCITRAL Digest. This substitution has been made to facilitate online access to CLOUT abstracts, original texts of court and arbitral decisions, and full text English translations of these texts (available in most but not all cases). For citations UNCITRAL had used, go to <http://www.uncitral.org/english/clout/digest_cisg_e.htm>.]

1. See, e.g., [GERMANY Oberlandesgericht [Appellate Court] Frankfurt 17 September 1991, available online at <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/910917g1.html>].

2. Compare, e.g., CLOUT case No. 244 [FRANCE Cour d’appel [Appellate Court] Paris 4 March 1998, available online at <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/980304f1.html>] (Incoterm EXW used) (see full text of the decision); CLOUT case No. 340 [GERMANY Oberlandesgericht [Appellate Court] Oldenburg 22 September 1998, available online at <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/980922g1.html>] (Incoterm DDP used).

3. CLOUT case No. 226 [GERMANY Oberlandesgericht [Appellate Court] Koblenz 16 January 1992, available online at <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/920116g1.html>].

4. CLOUT case No. 308 [AUSTRALIA Roder v. Rosedown [Federal Court] Adelaide 28 April 1995, available online at <http://cisgw3.law.pace.edu/cases/950428a2.html>].