Duty to examine the goods in International Law of Sales

Abstract

The duty to examine the goods in the international law of sales is regulated by Article 38 of the 1980 UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. The Convention explicitly provides that the buyer has the duty to examine the goods and sets out the time frame in which the examination should take place. The place of the examination may be deduced from the Convention. However, the Convention does not address the method and scope of the examination nor who should bear the costs of the examination. This paper analyzes some aspects of the duty to examine the goods. The importance of the duty to examine the goods, its purpose, relationship to the duty to notify the seller of the lack of conformity of the goods and its legal nature are discussed at the outset. Subjects effecting the examination and method and scope of the examination are analyzed in the second part of this paper.