Goods Description On Insurance Policy/Certificate

[RolandLeupi]

sorry, dangereous if you don't know both
Roland

[BruceS]

To everyone, thank you for your responses. However, to add something to the case, if you as a bank have a knowledge of the beneficiary's business, a general description of Hardwood Lumber, and 4/4 Walnut Sawn Timber would be the same?

[NigelHolt]

Bruce,

I would not expect a bank to be entitled to take into account information it had simply by reason of a beneficiary being a customer in deciding if documents comply. However, the applicable law might possibly say differently.

As an aside I would add that in the event of litigation the language of the court (of competent jurisdiction) might be important; I could well see the court of an English speaking jurisdiction not seeing any inconsistency between -say- ‘Walnut’ and ‘hardwood’ but could see the court of a non-English speaking jurisdiction possibly considering that there is.

Jeremy

[KimChristensen]

Dear Jeremy,

I am sorry – but I just can not keep quiet

I have given your comment on “the language of the court (of competent jurisdiction)” much thought. The reason that I am sharing some of these thoughts in this forum at this point in time, is that I came to think about a discussion in DC World (October 2004) on ICC opinion TA.564rev where:

LC goods description stipulated “Men’s suede jackets…”, and
the invoice showed goods description as “Men’s suede jackets (imitation suede …)”.
[shown here as extracts. URL to TA.564rev mentioned below]

I realise, that case is not identical to this one – but still somewhere down the same road. The interesting point - coming back to the language of the court – is that the parties that contributed to the DCW discussion all were English speaking (coming from the US I accept – but this is still “English” in my ears
They discuss (amongst other things) the meaning and reach of both the words “suede” and “imitation”, and it goes without saying that they do not agree on this.

In that light it would be interesting to hear the opinions to the “walnut”/”hardwood” case from both people who’s mother tongue is English and people who’s mother tongue is something else.
(Accepting of course that the first 4 postings on this discussion support your “assump-tion”)

ICC opinion TA.564rev can be found at:
http://focus.dcprofessional.com/DCpro-LevelThree.asp?
dcpropage=Advanced%20Search%20Result&query=suede&r=on&o=on&d=on&dci=on&n=on&f=
on&l=on&s=on&c=o
n&e=&isbp=on&iccps=on&ev=on&Locator=18&styletype=ICC%20Opinions&i=0&nb=0&DocType=ICC%20Opinions

Woof
Kim

[LisaVC]

Speaking as person whose mother tongue is English BUT has little-to-no knowledge of wood, I recognize that walnut is a type of wood, but have no idea as to whether it is considered a "hard" or "soft" wood. "Lumber" I tend to think as a "raw" rather than a finished product based on the advertising I see at home improvement stores. Would those ideas characterize what a "reasonable" person (as common law is so fond of using) might think?

[NigelHolt]

For what it is worth, the Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd ed., revised) describes -in this context- ‘lumber’ as:

‘chiefly N Amer. timber sawn into rough planks or otherwise partly prepared’.

Incidentally, I do not see this as grounds for arguing that ‘lumber’ is ‘inconsistent’ with ‘timber’.

[MojcaP]

Dear Bruce and others,
I(as non native English speaker) support opinion that description of goods differs(ie.discrepancy is valid).