I was in the pub on Saturday and my mate was moaning. His wife had bought a hair dryer which he thought was too hot. His wife was happy with her purchase but my (balding) mate had suffered what he described as a serious “melting injury” in his rush to get ready for the pub. My mate has always been prone to theatrics. When we played football as kids he had a season ticket in the St John’s Ambulance. He was a total embarrassment to his poor dad, who was regarded locally as the hardest footballer ever to walk the earth. My mate had an awful lot to live up to – and, in all honesty, he didn’t!
His severe melting injury manifested itself as very mild “redness” to the crown of his bald head. He said he was going to take the hair dryer back because it was not “fit for purpose”. I could tell he’d been reading the Citizens Advice Bureau website again so I tried to get his (red) head straight.
As a local lawyer, I’m often asked to explain legal concepts in the pub. In my experience, people hate paying lawyers, so if you can get your knowledge, for free, on a Saturday night and avoid asking any questions between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday, you’ve had great result.
I explained the position to my mate like this. Under consumer law, you have a statutory right to reject any goods, bought in a shop, which are not fit for the purpose for which they were sold. If you buy something in a shop which is not “fit for purpose”, you are entitled to a full refund, providing the problem is brought to the shop keeper’s attention within a reasonable time – and you have not done anything which would reasonably be construed as showing your acceptance of the goods: using the hairdryer every day, for example, or perhaps smashing it up!
I explained, as nicely as I could, that a hairdryer which pumps out hot air to dry hair would seem (in my eyes at least) to be pretty “spot on” in terms of functionality. I had my work cut out though. He’s a hard guy to please. This was the mate who criticized Nelson Mandela for falling short on his economic policy after bringing the apartheid regime to an end. “It’s not as if he’s had no time on his hands” was how he assessed Nelson’s shortcomings. I persevered by telling him about my daughter’s fish....a very sorry tale indeed.
In the summer, when I disappeared to watch England’s embarrassing attempt to win the FIFA World Cup, I left my daughter in charge of the fish. She promised to feed Tommy (a goldfish) and Midge (type unknown...but it was really little!) every single day. I gave my wife a supervisory role in case my daughter “fell short”, Nelson Mandela style. Well to cut this part of the story short, mum and daughter both let themselves down and when I returned from my trip, Tommy had eaten Midge in preference to starving to death himself.
“But what’s this got to do with fitness for purpose?” my pal asked . We were close to last orders and his fear of running over into the “charging zone” was palpable.
I explained that in a fit of guilt, my wife had sent me and our girl down to the pet shop to buy some presents for Tommy; basically some new gravel (lucky boy!) and anything else which took our fancy. What took my daughter’s fancy was a little fishy pergola and a little clay model of an open jawed Moby Dick. She was delighted with her purchases, but forgot all about the fish again once we were home and everything was in the tank.
I was a bit nervous about Tommy’s immediate reaction to Moby, but he seemed to calm down a bit the following day and all was well again in fish world.
To my horror though, when I went to feed Tommy before work on Monday morning, he was nowhere to be seen. The tank was fish- free! After I’d checked my wife’s movements (she hadn’t fished out the fish) I had a ridiculous conversation with our decorator who was the only other person present and capable of fishnapping. If I’m honest, he seemed a bit affronted, and certainly very surprised, by my line of questioning. In hindsight, he definitely had the moral high ground: what self respecting decorator would steal a very old fish?
It was only in the evening, when I was following up on my wife’s theory that dead fish don’t always float, but sometimes bury themselves in gravel (I know....ridculous!) that I made a gruesome finding. As I accidentally nudged Moby Dick onto its side, I saw Tommy’s orange body lodged fairly, squarely and very uncomfortably into the base of the model. Moby Dick, the new fish toy, had eaten Tommy the fish. Now that, I pronounced, is what can properly be described, in a legal sense, as “not fit for purpose”....a fish eating fish toy!
My rather uncharitable mate finished his pint with the following words: “ Well I have to say I think Tommy got exactly what he deserved ” . He had a point.
Next week’s blog takes me to Amersham fair (for replacement fish) and to the thorny legal issue of private wheel clamping...watch this space!
