Ambiguity in an Auction Notice
A CWC godown issues the following notice, drafted by a junior assistant, and pastes it on the gate:
'NOTICE. Notice is hereby given that the undersigned will sell by auction the goods lying in Godown No. 4 which have not been removed within the prescribed period of notice on 15 March at 11 a.m. The owners are requested to clear their dues immediately failing which they will be liable for action. The godown will not be responsible for any loss.'
A consignor whose 140 bags of turmeric are in Godown No. 4 reads it and claims the sale is illegal because 'the notice never told me the period and the date is not clear'. He threatens to move the High Court. The godown manager says the notice is fine 'because everyone in the trade knows 15 March is the sale date and 60 days is the notice period'. The 60-day period appears nowhere in the notice, and the consignor's bags arrived 47 days ago. The legal officer asks you for two things: what exactly is wrong with the language, and a corrected notice.
1. Identify the faults in the notice, naming the grammatical problem and the practical consequence of each.
Read the worked answer
Grammatical faults
- Relative-clause attachment. In 'the goods lying in Godown No. 4 which have not been removed', which can be read as qualifying Godown No. 4 (an unused, unremoved building) or the goods. Read against the godown, the clause is absurd; read against the goods, it is the intended meaning. A comma and a rewrite are not enough - the clause has to be moved next to its noun.
- Squinting modifier. '…within the prescribed period of notice on 15 March at 11 a.m.' can mean removal is required by 15 March, or that the auction is on 15 March. Both readings are open, and they have very different consequences for the consignor.
- Faulty pronoun reference. 'failing which they will be liable for action' - they may be the owners or the dues.
- Empty legalese. 'liable for action' names no consequence. A notice must state the consequence: sale of the goods by public auction and recovery of storage charges from the proceeds.
Substantive omissions
- No date of issue, no issuing authority or designation, no statutory provision under which the sale is held.
- No description or quantity of goods, no reserve price, no place of auction, no right to inspect before the sale.
- The period is missing altogether - the one term the consignor most needs.
- 'The godown will not be responsible for any loss' cannot be cured by drafting: a notice on a gate cannot unilaterally exclude the duty of care a bailee owes. Delete it rather than polish it.
2. Draft a corrected notice of about 70–90 words that keeps the original purpose and closes the ambiguities.
Read the worked answer
NOTICE OF PUBLIC AUCTION OF UNREMOVED GOODS
Issued on [date] by [name, designation], Warehouse Manager, CWC [godown], under [statutory provision/receipt terms].
140 bags of turmeric belonging to [consignor] lie in Godown No. 4 and have remained unremoved for 47 days from the date of deposit, despite notice. Unless the goods and all storage charges are removed and paid by 5 p.m. on [last date], they will be sold by public auction on 15 March at 11 a.m. at Godown No. 4. The proceeds will be applied to storage and sale charges, and the balance, if any, kept for the owner.
The goods may be inspected at the godown on any working day before the sale.
Why this version works: each date is attached to the action it governs (removal date, auction date); the owner, the goods, the quantity and the place are named; the consequence is stated; and the exclusion-of-liability sentence is gone.
3. On the manager's own case that a 60-day notice period applies, was the 15 March sale valid? Answer with dates and reasoning.
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No - the sale would be premature even on the manager's own facts.
If a 60-day period applies and the goods were deposited 47 days before the consignor raised the objection, then 13 more days were required before the notice period expired. A sale on 15 March - which is within that 47-day period - falls 13 days short of the manager's own stated period.
The manager's answer ('everyone knows') fails on two grounds:
- A notice must be self-contained. A term that affects a person's property cannot be supplied by trade rumour; if 60 days is the rule, it must be printed, with the deposit date, so the reader can compute the expiry for himself. As drafted, the consignor could not have known the period at all.
- The arithmetic is against the manager. Even if the consignor is held to the 60 days he was never told about, the sale is 13 days too early. The manager's defence proves the consignor's point.
The practical instruction: withdraw the 15 March auction, reissue a notice with the dates inserted, and serve it on the consignor with proof of service. Where genuine urgency exists - perishable goods, or accruing charges exceeding value - the correct route is the contractual or statutory power to sell after notice, exercised on the record, not a notice drafted so loosely that it can be read in three ways.