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| Abstract | ||||||||||||||||||
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| An Italian seller and a Swiss buyer concluded a contract for the sale of blocks of stone. The seller delivered the goods and issued the corresponding invoices which remained unpaid. Thereafter, the seller formally requested the buyer to pay the the purchase price. The buyer did not pay the price and the seller commenced action claiming payment of the full purchase price with interest.
The Court held that the contract was governed by CISG as, at the time of the conclusion of the contract, the parties had their places of business in different contracting States (Switzerland and Italy) (Art. 1(1)(a) CISG). The Court observed that according to Arts. 58(1) and 59 CISG, if the contract does not contain any different provision, the buyer must pay the purchase price when the seller places the goods at the buyer's disposal without the need for any formal request on the part of the seller. The seller was therefore entitled to payment of the full purchase price beginning from that date. The Court further awarded interest to the seller in compliance with Art. 78 CISG and found that interest accrued from the date the seller formally requested payment from the buyer. The Court observed that since the seller had expressly claimed interest accruing from that date, it could not award interest accruing from an earlier time. With regard to the interest rate, the Court considered this to be a question governed, but not expressly settled, by CISG (Art. 7(2) CISG), and applied the statutory rate of the State whose law would have been the governing law of the contract in the absence of CISG (Italy). However, the Court awarded the interest rate expressly referred to in seller's claim which was 2% lower than the Italian statutory rate. |