Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Washington

Re: Personal Property Sale

This is a great question and one that comes up all the time. In the business world, where commercial contracts are involved, the rules are set and depending on the language of the contract, I could answer this question.

In your daughter's situation there is a glaring problem: there is no written contract (or at least you did not mention it). If this gets to a small claims court, it is going to come down to how the parties behaved that will tip the court off to what the agreement was between your daughter and the buyers. Every case has two sides to it, but if I look at what you wrote, I'd say that your daughter's story is credible. Who gives full price unless they intended to purchase the couches. The fact the buyers did not immediately take possession does not sway me to find that the deal was not done when they turned over the cash.

Think of it this way. A customer walks into a Sears store and orders something from a catalog and pays for it. The order comes in, Sears calls the customer who never picks it up. A year later, the customer wants a full refund on the basis they never picked it up. Sears complains that is not fair since Sears could not sell it to anyone else, given it was already sold to the customer. If anything, Sears says the customer is lucky they did not throw it away as abandoned goods.

The above scenario could go either way. It all hinges on Sears' purchase agreement the customer signs when paying for the order. Most likely, given that Sears writes the contract and the salesman will not negotiate a custom contract with you on the spot, the customer is out of luck.

I think the same could be said about your daughter's case, but without a written contract that explains how long she must hold it, and what happens in the event of a refund being sought, I think it could go either way. It will come down to fleshing out the facts from both sides' stories along with each side's credibility and if there are witnesses to the transaction, they may also testify and help establish one side or the other's credibility.