{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":191,"pdf_page":199,"physical_index":199,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"053bceacf04c6c3bd9ad999af0c51b5394d07d9058e8b150afd96ce638c143d1"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"3. From Caveat Emptor to the Implied Product Warranty\n\nThe development of commercial warranties did not take place in a legal vacuum. For the twentieth century witnessed fundamental changes in laws covering consumer transactions and product liability, and these changes formed the backdrop to evolving commercial practice. In broad terms, the changes can be characterized as an overturning of the legal principle of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware), with moves, albeit not uncontested ones, toward its replacement by the opposite principle, caveat venditor (let the seller beware). President Roosevelt, in an address to Congress on March 29, 1933, referred to the new principle. Arguing for the need to regulate the market for securities, Roosevelt noted that “this proposal adds to the ancient rule of caveat emptor the further doctrine: Let the seller beware.”29 The new mood was echoed in retail trade magazines. The pronouncement was made in a piece published in 1931 in The Chain Store Magazine that “truly, the old maxim, ‘Let the customer beware,’ should be changed to ‘Let the merchant beware.’”30\n\nAccording to the principle of caveat emptor, the buyer takes on the burden of risk inherent in any commercial transaction. If goods are faulty in any way, this must be discovered by the purchaser before purchasing the item. The only exception to this rule is where the buyer can prove that the seller deliberately concealed functionally significant flaws in the purchased product, in which case the buyer has a legal right to a refund. But the seller has no legal obligation to guarantee that the goods she sells are “fit for purpose.” Caveat emptor entailed that all consumer transactions are by default covered by an implicit “sold as-is” clause.\n\nAlthough it had some precedent in Roman law, in the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition caveat emptor first emerged in the sixteenth century. It remained, in the English-speaking world, the dominant legal principle covering marketplace transactions through the nineteenth century. In the United States, it was first clearly established as a legal principle in 1817, in the case of Laidlaw v. Organ. Legal scholar Walton Hamilton (1931), in his still definitive history of the subject, suggests that the doctrine of caveat emptor was even more influential in nineteenth-century America than it was in Victorian England.31 In the early twentieth century, however, thinking about commercial law in the US began to change. The turning point is marked by the Uniform Sales Act of 1906, which was loosely based on the British Sale of Goods Act of 1893, and first established the principle of the implied warranty. According to the principle of the implied warranty, the default legal assumption in commercial transactions is that a good should be fit for a specific purpose. Where goods are found to be not fit for their purpose, the consumer has legal recourse. To avoid legal obligations entailed by the implied warranty, the default assumption of fitness for purpose must be explicitly nullified by a statement on the part of the vendor to the efect that goods are sold “as is,” at which point the balance of risk in the transaction switches to the buyer.32 The implied warranty thus efectively reversed the situation obtaining under the principle of caveat emptor. It took some time for the implied warranty to be accepted throughout the United States. The Uniform Sales Acts encountered significant resistance from the states, especially those in the South, and by 1947, more than forty years after the 1906 act, only 34 states had adopted it. In 1952 a more comprehensive piece of legislation, the Uniform Commercial Code, superseded the Uniform Sales Act, and was promptly passed into law in every state. The Uniform Commercial Code reafirmed the legal principle of the implied warranty.\n\nStandardizing Utility\n\n191","previous_page":190,"next_page":192}