Book review
Book Title: Atakora &Attakora on Sale of Goods
Author: Jude Atakora Tufuor & Kweku Attakora Dwomoh
Atakora and Attakora is a book carefully authored to meet the academic and business demands of the lack of an existence of any book on the sale of goods in Ghana and it’s Anglophone neighbouring countries within the West African legal and business market. The book contains simple language and the breakdown of the seeming complex laws on the sale of goods. The book discusses the Ghanaian position of the sale of goods and how it fits into both the received common law and the persuasive common law.
The driving force of this publication is to educate and inform traders on their rights and obligations in various trading markets in the face of increasing trading volumes globally. Atakora and Attakora is aimed basically at traders, practicing lawyers, students, judges, arbitrators and legal academics. The aim of the book is to elaborate and codify the laws on the sale of goods as are peculiar to the Anglophone West African market taking into consideration the decision made by judges from the various courts and the socio-cultural impacts on the various transactions.
The authors resolved to commence Atakora & Attakora on sale of goods with an introduction to commercial law, the history thereof and detailed account through case law with the development of Lex Mercantoria and its assimilation into the common law.
The book focuses mainly on the sale of goods in Ghana and its statute, the Sale of Goods Act, 1962, Act 137. It is concerned with the obligations between the parties to a contract of sales transaction, the terms of those contracts including express and implied terms, the category of goods, the passing of property and the risk in the goods, as well as the remedies available to parties in such a transaction.
With regards to the passing of property, the books specifically focus on Romalpa clauses which enables a seller to reserve ownership in the goods and still manage to give up possession of those goods to a buyer or its representatives.
Unique to this book is a chapter reserved for the discussion on the impact of electronic sales with regard to ownership of goods, risk in those goods and the extent to which a buyer can reject those goods. With regard to online sales the book observes a difficulty to the principle of seller’s ordinary course of business as well as the difficulty with direct application of remedies to a seller in an online transaction.
The adoption of private international laws such as the International commercial trade terms (incoterms) as promulgated by the international chamber of commerce is considered in great detail in with the discussion of its history, the changes made by incoterms 2020 and incoterms such as FOB, CIF , CIP and FCA.
Finally, the provisions of the International Convention on the Sale of Goods is discussed and how it compares with the Sale of Goods Act, 1962, (Act 137).
