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When goods are not to be shipped by carrier, the passage of risk ofloss depends on whether the seller is a merchant or a private party. Ifthe seller is a private party, the risk of loss passes to the buyer whenthe seller delivers the product. This occurs when the seller offers toturn the goods over to the buyer.Example 10. Suppose that in Example 9, Maria offered to turnthe camcorder over to Aleksei at the agreed time. However,Aleksei refused to take it at that time, saying that he would pickit up in two weeks. Three days later, the camcorder was stolenfrom Maria’s house. Because Maria is a private party, Alekseimust suffer the loss and still pay the contract price to Maria.If the seller is a merchant, however, the risk of loss is transferredfrom the seller to the buyer when the buyer receives the goods. Thus,if Aleksei had been in the same situation with a dealer, he would nothave suffered the loss. The merchant would have been responsible forthe loss. Instead of following these rules, the parties may agree toother times and places regarding the risk of loss.Documents of TitleSometimes when you buy goods you receive a document of title,rather than the actual goods. A document of title is a paper giving youthe right to receive the goods named in the document. When you givethe document of title to the holder of the goods—a warehouse orContracts and the ComputerA university was having problems tracking students who failed to payfinancial aid loans. To address this problem, the university took two steps. First,it bought a new mainframe computer. This contract involved only hardwareand was a sale-of-goods. Second, it bought software from the same companyand had the company write programs to handle its software needs. Becausethe software purchase was secondary to the computer purchase, this combinationof contracts is a sale-of-goods. Software packages that are bought onthe open market are considered to be sale-of-goods contracts.Connect Using the Internet, find a copy of a standard sale-of-goods contract. Thendevelop a sample contract that may be used in the scenario presented in this feature.280 Unit 3: Understanding Consumer Law