Reproducing, in expanded form, Professor Goode’s fourth series of Commercial Law Lectures at Queen Mary College, London, this slender volume penetratingly probes some problem areas of sales law and provokes thought.

Insolvency provides the acid test of the effectiveness of legal rights. Persons having proprietary or possessory rights to goods held by or belonging to the insolvent usually recover all or most of what is due to them by claiming their goods (or tracing proceeds of their disposition) or retaining the insolvent’s goods until their claims are met. Those having mere personal rights of action in contract or tort must compete with other creditors for the insufficient residue and usually recover little or nothing. The author therefore examines generally the acquisition and loss of ownership and possession under sale contracts before considering particular problems concerning sales of oil and gas in strata and pipelines, goods purchased through agents, goods in warehouses or transit, and goods sold under reservation of title.

The instructive initial review of ownership and possession is supplemented by the Appendix reproducing the illuminating but inexplicably unreported judgment of Oliver, J. (as he then was) in Re London Wine Company (Shippers) Ltd. (1975), which powerfully reinforces various points in the Court of Appeal’s decision in Re Wait [1927] 1 Ch. 606. The main lesson, perhaps, since most commercial contracts are for initially unascertained goods, is that mutually agreed identification of the contract goods before the seller becomes insolvent is equally important whether the buyer claims a proprietary or a possessory right to them: for ownership cannot pass before the goods are ascertained; actual delivery of unidentified goods is obviously impossible; and, although the seller or a warehouseman holding a larger stock of such goods for him may orally or by issuing a document of title agree to hold as bailee for the buyer, only if the contract goods have been identified can such attornment confer constructive possession rather than, by estoppel, a mere personal right to sue for conversion (pp. 6–10). Where the buyer wants “quasi-specific” goods from a larger specified stock, he can avoid the danger by contracting for, say, an 80% share of the stock rather than for 80 of the 100 articles in that stock, as the former makes him a tenant in common with the seller (pp. 21–22). But that cannot help where the source is unspecified.

Co-ownership features more strongly in solving the complex problems of acquiring title to oil and gas under government licences for onshore and offshore exploitation, since only consortia of companies can afford the costs of such projects and their products are commingled in shared pipelines. We are reminded that legal tenancy in common of goods is possible but not of choses in action, such as rights under licences (p. 30, n. 34).

Literature is copious concerning sale by an agent (A) of goods of his principal (P) to a third party (T) but sparse about how P acquires title to goods bought from T through A. Several possibilities are explored, applying the basic principle that ownership of goods, once identi