Question

Marina advertises her family home for sale on Trade Me and describes the house as being “in the Grammar Zone”. Eric buys the house but subsequently discovers the house is not in the Grammar zone and his children will have to go to a different school. Which TWO statements best describe Eric's legal position:

Eric may claim under s9 of the Fair Trading Act for misleading and deceptive conduct.

Eric may claim under s13 of the Fair Trading Act for false or misleading representation.

Eric has no claim under the Consumer Guarantees Act

. Eric may sue on the basis of breach of fiduciary obligation which is owed by a seller to a buyer.

This is a breach of the Consumer Guarantees Act which requires items to correspond with their description in advertisements.

Eric has no claim under the Fair Trading Act.

Answer 1

Firstly Eric has no claim in the consumer guarantees act. It does not cover goods for commercial and business purposes. And that includes transactions on websites like Trade me.

Eric can claim under s13 of the fair trading act on the charges of false or misleading representation. As Marina falsely represented the house as being in the Grammar Zone, Eric has an opportunity to leverage s13 of the fair trading act to get justice against Marina.

The breach of fiduciary obligation occurs when the fiduciary acts in the best interest of themselves (in this case Marina). Although it sounds right, Eric can expect best response to his claims under the fair trading act as the burden is on him to indeed explicitly prove that Marina purely acted of self interests.