‘Wrong Price Tag’ at a Supermarket in the Focus of General Principles of Law
Abstract
The article compares the German and Russian sales contract models by the example of civil cases illustrating the specifics of shopping at a supermarket. Analyzing the ratio of offer and acceptance, as well as the specifics of invitatio ad offerendum and the so-called public agreement, the authors capture the gaps of legal regulation for both models. Basing on the materials presented in this article, the authors consider it necessary to formulate the following main conclusions:
- legal uncertainties exist not only in the civil and economic transactions in Russia and Germany. The civil cases considered in this article were studied not only from the perspective of national legislation norms of Germany and Russia but also in the context of general principles of law, the reasonable person standard and the trust protection principle;
- the model of the sales contract adopted in the Russian law leaves the seller and the buyer in a stalemate when solving the problem of a wrong price tag at the supermarket checkout. Moreover, such model in the trend creates a complex legal and technical issue. On the contrary, the German law model of the sales contract unambiguously indicates the fact that it is impossible to recognize the wrong price tag as mandatory, as this contravenes with the freedom-of-contract doctrine;
- the dominant paradigm of legal positivism determines that legal value is given only to the principles clearly entrenched in the active legislation. In the absence of positive law standards, these gaps can be filled by applying the general principles of law recognized by the civilized nations.
References
[2] Brox, H. 1992. Besonderes Schuldrecht (18. Auflage). München: Beck: 2
[3] Bucic, T., Harris, J., Arli, D. 2012. Ethical Consumers among the Millennials: A Cross-National Study. Journal of Business Ethics, 110(1), 113-131.
[4] Däubler, W. 2003. BGB Kompakt: Systematische Darstellung des Zivilrechts (2. Auflage). München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag: 419-421.
[5] Dörner, et al. 2002. BGB: Handkommentar (2. Auflage). Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag: 111.
[6] Dudin, M.N., and Frolova, E.E. 2015. The Balanced Scorecard as a basis for strategic company management in the context of the world economy transformation. Asian Social Science, 3, 282-288.
[7] Dudin, М.N., Smirnov, V.P., Rusakova, E.P. 2017. The Formation of Entrepreneurship in Russia: Historical Background and Modernity. Bylye gody, 46(4), 1174-1183.
[8] Kaganova, A.S. 2017. Tipichnye oshibki merchendaizinga [Typical Mistakes of Merchandising]. In Problemy formirovaniya edinogo nauchnogo prostranstva [Problems of Uniform Scientific Space Formation]. Chelyabinsk: 115-119.
[9] Schapp, J. 2006. Sistema germanskogo grazhdanskogo prava [The System of German Civil Law] (S.V. Koroleva, Trans.). Мoscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya: 88.
[10] Sukhanov, E.A. (Ed.). 2006. Grazhdanskoe pravo v 4 t. Tom 3: Obyazatelstvennoe pravo [Civil Law in 4 Volumes. Volume 3: Law of Obligation]. Moscow: Wolters Kluwer: 235.
The Copyright Transfer Form to ASERS Publishing (The Publisher)
This form refers to the manuscript, which an author(s) was accepted for publication and was signed by all the authors.
The undersigned Author(s) of the above-mentioned Paper here transfer any and all copyright-rights in and to The Paper to The Publisher. The Author(s) warrants that The Paper is based on their original work and that the undersigned has the power and authority to make and execute this assignment. It is the author's responsibility to obtain written permission to quote material that has been previously published in any form. The Publisher recognizes the retained rights noted below and grants to the above authors and employers for whom the work performed royalty-free permission to reuse their materials below. Authors may reuse all or portions of the above Paper in other works, excepting the publication of the paper in the same form. Authors may reproduce or authorize others to reproduce the above Paper for the Author's personal use or for internal company use, provided that the source and The Publisher copyright notice are mentioned, that the copies are not used in any way that implies The Publisher endorsement of a product or service of an employer, and that the copies are not offered for sale as such. Authors are permitted to grant third party requests for reprinting, republishing or other types of reuse. The Authors may make limited distribution of all or portions of the above Paper prior to publication if they inform The Publisher of the nature and extent of such limited distribution prior there to. Authors retain all proprietary rights in any process, procedure, or article of manufacture described in The Paper. This agreement becomes null and void if and only if the above paper is not accepted and published by The Publisher, or is with drawn by the author(s) before acceptance by the Publisher.