A agrees to sell to B 100 bags of flour which are in his storeroom. Before the date of delivery, the storeroom of 'A' got flooded with water. Consequently, the 100 bags of flour get destroyed. Does B have any right against A? Discuss section 8 of Sales of Goods Act.

Classifying the Contract

The first step is to identify what kind of contract exists between A and B. Since the 100 bags of flour are already lying in A's storeroom — that is, they are identified and agreed upon at the time the contract was made — they constitute "specific goods" within the meaning of Section 2(14). Because delivery is to take place at a future date, and property has evidently not yet passed to B, this is an "agreement to sell" rather than an executed "sale," as defined under Section 4(3). This distinction is critical, because Section 7 (dealing with goods that have already perished before the contract itself is made) is inapplicable here — the flour existed and was intact when A and B struck their bargain, and it perished only afterward, before the date fixed for delivery. This is precisely the situation Section 8 is designed to address.

Text and Effect of Section 8

Section 8 provides that where there is an agreement to sell specific goods, and subsequently the goods, without any fault on the part of either the seller or the buyer, perish or become so damaged as no longer to answer their description in the agreement, before the risk passes to the buyer, the agreement is thereby avoided. Three conditions must be satisfied for this section to operate: the goods must be specific goods identified at the time of the agreement; their destruction or damage must occur without fault of either party; and the destruction must occur before the risk has passed to the buyer. On the facts given, the storeroom flooding is a fortuitous, non-culpable event — there is no suggestion of negligence on A's part in storing the flour, nor any act or omission by B — and since delivery has not yet taken place, risk had not passed to B under the general rule that risk follows property (Section 26). All three conditions are therefore met, and the agreement between A and B stands automatically avoided.

The Underlying Legal Rationale

This rule rests on the doctrine of impossibility of performance, corresponding to Section 56 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872. The law recognises that where performance of a contract becomes impossible through no fault of either contracting party, it would be unjust to hold either of them liable — A cannot be compelled to deliver flour that no longer exists, and B cannot be compelled to pay for flour he never received and never will. It is worth noting the important distinction the treatise draws between Sections 7 and 8: under Section 7, where goods have already perished before the contract is even made, the resulting contract is void ab initio, as though it never came into existence at all; under Section 8, by contrast, where the goods perish after a valid agreement to sell has already been made, the agreement is merely "avoided" from the point of destruction onward, since a legally valid agreement did genuinely come into existence before the supervening destruction discharged it.

Application of Illustrations from the Text

The commentary's illustrations on Section 7, while technically addressing goods perishing before the contract is made, illustrate the same underlying principle that applies with equal force under Section 8. For instance, where A agrees to sell B a specific horse, and it turns out the horse was already dead at the time of bargain unknown to either party, the contract is void. Applying the same logic to a Section 8 scenario, where A agrees to sell B a specific cargo of corn while at sea, and before the bargain is completed the ship strands and the corn is damaged so as no longer to answer to its description, the contract is treated as void for that very reason. Substituting the facts of the present problem, A's flour, once flooded and destroyed, no longer answers to the description of the "100 bags of flour" bargained for, and B accordingly has no right to demand delivery of flour that no longer exists in a deliverable state.

Important Limitation: Specific Versus Unascertained Goods

A crucial limitation must be flagged here. Section 8, exactly like Section 7, applies only to specific goods — goods identified and agreed upon at the time the contract is made. Had A merely agreed to sell "100 bags of flour" generally, without earmarking any particular bags as the subject matter of the contract, and had the flour perished from an undifferentiated stock, A would not escape liability under Section 8 at all — he would instead remain bound to procure 100 bags of flour from elsewhere, or else pay damages to B for non-delivery. The illustration given in the commentary, involving a seller who agreed to sell 50 bales of Bengal cotton out of 3,000 bales in his godown, and whose godown was destroyed by fire, makes clear that such a contract for unascertained goods is not void — the seller remains obligated to supply substitute goods of the same description. Since, however, the facts of the present question specify that the 100 bags "in his storeroom" were the identified subject matter of the agreement — making them specific goods — Section 8 squarely applies, and B's remedy against A for non-delivery is extinguished.

B's Position on Any Advance Payment

If B had already paid any part of the price to A in advance, the avoidance of the agreement under Section 8 would generally entitle B to recover that amount back, since the consideration for the payment has wholly failed once the specific goods contracted for cease to exist — this follows from the general principle, applied elsewhere under the Act, that money paid for goods that fail to answer their description or fail to materialise may be recovered as money had and received. Both parties are simply restored to the position of having no further obligations toward one another under the frustrated agreement.

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