On Monday, Alpine Ltd, a car manufacturer, agreed to buy 1,000 tyres from Brabus Ltd for the price of £50,000 to be paid within one week of despatch. It was agreed that these tyres would be supplied from Brabus Ltd’s existing stock of 1,200 of such tyres as stored in its main warehouse. It was agreed that the 1,000 tyres would be despatched by rail on Friday of the same week. Such tyres are in high demand and prices are rising daily. On Tuesday, Brabus Ltd placed exactly 1,000 tyres in the loading area of its main warehouse and displayed a label on them stating “property of Alpine Ltd”. On Wednesday, the 1,000 tyres were loaded onto Brabus Ltd’s own delivery lorry to be delivered to an independent railway carrier. Unfortunately, whilst the delivery lorry was refuelling at a service station en route to the railway carrier a fire broke out causing 400 of the tyres on the lorry to melt. It has been established that Brabus Ltd’s lorry driver was not responsible for the fire. Alpine Ltd is insisting upon taking delivery of the remaining 600 tyres, plus the 200 tyres remaining in Brabus Ltd’s warehouse, at the contract price. However, Brabus Ltd now intends to sell these to another customer at a much higher price. Alpine Ltd recently purchased 500kg of plastic pellets from Celica Ltd, a local plastics supplier, for the price of £10,000. This price was paid in full by Alpine Ltd at the time of contracting. After taking delivery of the pellets, Alpine processed 300kg of them into moulded plastic parts to be used in the manufacture of its car dashboards. However, it has now been discovered that Celica Ltd had purchased the plastic pellets from Damian who, unknown to Celica Ltd, had stolen them from Elan Ltd. Alpine Ltd has now written to Celica demanding a full refund of the £10,000 purchase price. Alpine Ltd has returned the remaining 200kg of plastic pellets to Elan Ltd which has in turn written to both Celica Ltd and Alpine Ltd threatening legal action if it is not compensated for its loss. Last week Alpine Ltd offered to sell a unique concept racing car which it had manufactured to Frank, the purchasing manager of Galaxy Ltd, a dealer in rare cars. As Frank knew, the racing car was unique as Alpine Ltd had manufactured it solely to promote the quality of its more standard cars and would not be producing another. Alpine Ltd believed that Frank had full authority to purchase the car on behalf of Galaxy Ltd but unknown to Alpine Ltd, Frank had been expressly instructed by Galaxy Ltd not to purchase any more vehicles at present as they currently had too much stock. Frank had decided to ignore this instruction as he believed that the unique concept racing car would sell very easily. Shortly before delivery of the racing car was due, Alpine Ltd became aware of Frank’s lack of authority to make the purchase. Aware of the demand for the racing car, Alpine Ltd immediately managed to sell it to another customer at twice the price agreed with Frank. Galaxy Ltd has now become aware of Frank’s actions and, keen to benefit from the deal made by Frank, has quickly written to Alpine Ltd expressly approving the purchase and insisting that the car is delivered as agreed. Four months ago, Huan, who runs his own mobile hairdressing business, purchased a new saloon car from Alpine Ltd for £20,000 for business use. After two weeks of using the car and driving a total of 1,000 miles, the steering of the car became defective, with the car constantly pulling to the left. Huan returned the car to Alpine Ltd in order for it to be repaired. Alpine Ltd returned the car to Huan one week later. After two further months of driving the car for a total of 6,000 miles, Huan informed Alpine Ltd that the steering problem was still persisting. Huan therefore returned the car to Alpine Ltd for further investigation of the problem. Huan has however now decided to reject the car and has informed Alpine Ltd accordingly. Alpine Ltd occasionally supplies Ignis Ltd with car engines on lengthy credit terms. All such engines are supplied to Ignis Ltd on the following terms: “Title in the goods supplied shall remain with the seller until full payment has been made for all the goods that are supplied under all contracts. If any of the goods are altered or processed in any way before such payment then the property in the whole of such goods so altered or processed shall be and remain with the seller until such payment has been made.” Alpine Ltd has recently supplied Ignis Ltd with four engines, each under a separate contract and each engine costing £6,000. Each of these engines has been paid for in full. Ignis Ltd has now installed one of these engines into a car and the other three engines have had other components integrated within them in order to improve their performance. Under an earlier contract Alpine Ltd had supplied Ignis Ltd with a single engine priced at £4,000. This engine has now been sold on by Ignis Ltd at a higher price to another car manufacturer. Although Ignis Ltd has now received payment from this manufacturer, Alpine has still not received payment for the engine. Ignis Ltd has now gone into liquidation. Jensen, the liquidator, is refusing to return any of the engines supplied by Alpine Ltd or to account for any of the proceeds of sale. Advise Alpine Ltd as to their legal rights and liabilities in the above circumstances.
Sample Solution