Consign

 In Stephanian's Persian Carpets, Justice Saunders of the Ontario Supreme Court wrote:

"In its simplest terms, a consignment is the sending of goods to another. An arrangement whereby an owner sends goods to another on the understanding that such other will sell the goods to a third party and remit the proceeds to the owner after deducting his compensation for effecting the sale is an example of a consignment agreement."

In a 2001 Saskatchewan case, Farm Credit Corporation, Justice Klebuc of the Court of Queen's Bench adopted these words:

"The term consignment, used in a commercial sense, ordinarily implies an agency and denotes that property is committed to the consignee for care or sale.

"It is generally accepted that if the consignee has a legal right to return to the consignor any or all of the consigned goods without obligation, then the arrangement is likely a true consignment."

An item can be consigned to a transportation company, for example, for the purpose of transporting it from one place to another.

The consignee is the person to receive the property and the consignor is the person who delivers or ships the property to the consignee.

REFERENCES:

• Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Bailment
• Farm Credit Corporation v. Valley Beef Producers Co-operative Ltd., 2001 SKQB 423, published at www.canlii.org/en/sk/skqb/doc/2001/2001skqb423/2001skqb423.html
• Re Stephanian's Persian Carpets Ltd. 34 Canadian Bankruptcy Reports (N.S.) 35 (1980). Cited with approval by the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench in Francey v. Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Co. 72 DLR 4th 544 (1990)