Misrepresentation issues

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

Just as Caveat Emptor is the common law applying to buyers, the vendor is 
also presumed to know what he has to sell. There is no legal obligation on 
a buyer to alert the seller to valuable information about the object for 
sale apparently known only to the buyer, no matter how sneaky or 
specialized the knowledge may be.

However, the ethical tightrope can be pretty tricky for most of us. Just as 
I would expect an ethical person to truthfully and completely answer my 
questions about the vehicle offered, I would have difficulty allowing a 
prospective vendor to make an obvious mistake in a representation to me 
that was unintentionally false but to my advantage to conceal the truth about.

Under certain very interesting, astoundingly complex, and relatively rare 
circumstances a mistake made by one party to a contract can, if known by 
the other party before the contract is concluded, be cause for avoidance of 
a contract even after completion of the sale.

I suggest the dividing line  accepted by gentlemen dealing in fine classic 
automobiles is whether the supposed defect is actually known to be 
substantially different by the purchaser than by the vendor. It is one 
thing to take a gamble that your supposition is correct and the defect much 
less serious than the vendor believes, and quite another to take advantage 
of the foolish or the ignorant. For a gentleman that is.

Alfa content: admittedly nil.

Cheers




Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta,Canada
91 Alfa 164L
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