Page images
PDF
EPUB

M. & P.
M. & Rob.
M. & S.
Murp. & H.
M. & W.
My. & C..

Myl. & K.

Moore and Payne's Reports.
Moody and Robinson's Reports.
Maule and Selwyn's Reports.
Murphy and Hurlstone's Reports.
Meeson and Welsby's Reports.
Mylne and Craig's Reports.
Mylne and Keene's Reports.

Nev. & M. or N. & M....Neville and Manning's Reports.

N. & P.

N. R.

N. S.

O. S.

Paley, P. & A.

P. D.
P. & D.

Pea. or Peake

Peake, Add. Cas.
Peake, N. P. C.

Penn. St.

Ph.

Pickering.

Poll. Con.

Pr. Ch.

Pri. or Price

Prid.

P. W. or P. Wms.

Q. B...
Q. B. D.

R. or Rep.
R. & Myl.
Roll. Abr.

Rosc. or Roscoe

Rose..
Russ.

Russ. & M.

Russ. Merc. Ag.
Ry. & M......

Salk.

Sch. & Lef.

Neville and Perry's Reports.

New Reports, by Bosanquet and Puller.
New Series.

Old Series.

.Paley on the Law of Principal and Agent.
Law Reports, New Series, Probate Division.
.Perry and Davison's Reports.
.Peake's Reports.

Peake's Additional Cases.
Peake's Nisi Prius Cases.

Pennsylvania State Reports.
Phillips's Reports.

Pickering's Reports (Massachusetts).

.Pollock on Contracts.

Precedents in Chancery (Finch).
.Price's Reports.

..Prideaux's Precedents in Conveyancing

Peere Williams's Reports.

Į Adolphus and Ellis, Queen's Bench Reports, New
Series.

..Law Reports, New Series, Queen's Bench Division.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Wolst. & Turn.

{Wolstenholme, and Turner's Conveyancing Acts,

Wood. or Woodf. L. & T. Woodfall's Landlord and Tenant.

W. & T. L. C.

Y. & C.

Y. & C. C. C.

Y. & J.
You...

..........

White and Tudor's Leading Cases.

Younge and Collyer's Reports.
Younge and Collyer's Chancery Cases.
Younge and Jervis's Reports.
Younge's Reports.

THE

LAW OF AUCTIONS.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

and

AN auction, in the widest sense of the term, is a sale, Definition however conducted, by which a person obliges himself to of auction transfer property to the highest bidder within the condi- auctioneer. tions of the sale; it ordinarily denotes such a sale conducted in the usual manner (a). An auctioneer is a person by whom auctions are conducted (b).

matter of

The property forming the subject of an auction-sale may Subjectbe either real or personal, or both (c); it is sold, sometimes as auctions.

(a) Cf. Dart, 177; and see next page.

(b) For circumstantial definitions of auction and auctioneer, see the statutes 19 Geo. III. c. 56, s. 3, and 42 Geo. III. c. 93, s. 14, both repealed by 8 & 9 Vict. c. 15; and also s. 4 of the last-named statute (see Appendix, post, p. 388). Auctioneers were sometimes called brokers in our old law. Spelman in his Glossary, "Auctionarii,” defines them thus: "Qui publicis subhastationibus præsunt, propola, et quos Angli brokers' dicimus." Cf. Story, Ag., p. 24, note 4. For the distinction between auctioneers and brokers, see post, p. 18, note (w). An auctioneer is a trader within the Bankruptcy Act, 1869 (32 & 33 Vict. c. 71).

(c) Wife auctions, in ancient times, were of annual occurrence in Wife Babylonia; see the interesting description of Herodotus (I., 196), auctions. who speaks of them as being, in his opinion, the best of the Babylonian customs. The view that women are only a species of property-a view of which traces have been discerned in the pandects of the Netherlands and Spain, in the West Gothic and Longobard laws, and even in the marriage service of the Church of England-has perhaps not even yet died out. It is said that the practice of selling marriageable girls by auction obtained until recently at the great fairs of Nijni-Novgorod, in Russia; and a belief that the sale of a wife by auction operates legally as a divorce appears still to linger in some of our own rural and manufacturing districts.

B

Kinds of auctions.

1. Ordinary.

2. Roups.

3. Dutch auctions.

a whole, sometimes in lots; and the property of several owners is frequently offered for sale at one and the same auction.

The usual manner of conducting an auction is as follows. The fact that the sale is to be held, the particulars of the property, and the time and place of the sale, are advertised in the newspapers or by handbills (in some places, the public crier), or in both ways. At the time and place appointed, the auctioneer, from his desk or rostrum, reads aloud the conditions upon which the property will be transferred to the highest bidder, and invites those present to bid. Thereupon, those who are desirous of purchasing bid, one after the other, each succeeding offer being higher than the preceding one, and the biddings being called by the auctioneer. The highest bidder is declared the purchaser, the acceptance of his offer being signified to the company by the auctioneer striking his desk with a small portable hammer; whence the auctioneer is said to knock down the property to the buyer. If there is a reserve, and it is not reached, the auctioneer withdraws the property. In Scotland, where an auction is called a roup, the proceedings are much the same, except that disputes arising at the auction are commonly referred to an umpire, called the judge of roup, and that, on the sale of an estate, a sum at which the biddings are to commence, called the upset price, is generally published beforehand.

In a so-called Dutch auction the property is put up at a high price, and if no one takes it at that sum, a less amount is named, and so on, until some one closes with the offer (d).

Former (d) The mode of conducting sales by auction of the former post horse auctions of duties was a mixture of a Dutch auction and an ordinary auction. The post horse duties were put up at a large sum named in the particulars, and the produties. ceedings began in the same manner as in a Dutch auction; but, when any person bid, others might advance on his bidding, and the highest bidder was declared the purchaser, just as if the sale had been conducted in the ordinary way.

« PreviousContinue »