The status of the statutory implied terms 93treat this breach as breach of a condition and will be entitled to reject the car and treat the
contract as terminated (as well as to claim damages). The car dealer will not be able to treat
the contract as terminated if the breach is so slight as to make this unreasonable. As he
did not deal as a consumer when buying the car, s. 15A requires him to treat the breach of
condition as a breach of warranty. So the car dealer will not be able to reject the car, but will
be able to claim damages for breach of warranty. The car dealer would therefore be likely to
repair the car, or have it repaired, and then claim damages from the manufacturer. These
damages might reflect the cost of the repair and any profit which the dealer lost as a result
of the sale to the consumer falling through.Section 15A applies only where the buyer does not ‘deal as a consumer’. The SGA 1979,
like the SGITA 1973 and the SGSA 1982, decides whether or not a person is dealing as a
consumer by applying the definition set out in s. 12 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.
This definition is complex and is considered later in this chapter, on p. 102, where a flow
chart shows how the section should be applied.
The Sale of Goods Act 1979 s. 11(4) makes one further important rule. It provides
that where a seller of goods breaches a condition, a buyer who has ‘accepted’ the goods
must treat the breach of condition as a breach of warranty. Therefore, such a buyer cannot
terminate the contract but can still claim damages. Acceptance by the buyer has a technical
meaning, which is examined in detail in Chapter 7. Here it is enough to say that a buyer will
be deemed by s. 35 to have accepted the goods if he:
(i) keeps them for more than a reasonable time without rejecting them; or
(ii) indicates acceptance of them; or
(iii) does an act which is inconsistent with the seller continuing to own the goods.
Figure 3.8Effect of breach of sections 13, 14 and 15, SGA 1979