Question

Principle: Property consists of right to possess, right to use, right to alienate, and right to exclude others. Sale is complete when property gets transferred from the seller to the buyer.
Facts: ‘A’ sold his car to ‘B’. B requested A to keep the car in his care on behalf of B for one month. A agreed.

• A. Sale of car is complete.
• B. Sale of car is not complete.
• C. Sale will be completed when B keeps the car in his own care.
• D. Sale will be automatically completed after the expiry of one month.

Hint:

Sale is considered complete when the ownership of the property is transferred, not when possession is given.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

The principle states that the sale of property is complete when the property is transferred from the seller to the buyer. In this case, A has already agreed to sell the car to B. The agreement between them is sufficient for the sale to be complete. The fact that B requested A to keep the car for one month does not alter the completion of the sale. Hence, the sale is complete as soon as the transaction is agreed upon. Therefore, option (A) is correct.
Option (B) is incorrect because the sale is already complete once A and B have agreed upon the terms. Option (C) is incorrect as it introduces an additional condition not required by the principle. Option (D) is incorrect because the sale is already complete; the one-month delay is merely for the storage of the car, not the completion of the sale.

Answer 2

This question tests whether a sale of goods is completed by the transfer of ownership itself or only once physical possession also passes to the buyer. Let's examine each option against the given principle.

1. Sale of car is complete: The principle defines property as consisting of the right to possess, use, alienate, and exclude others, and states that a sale is complete when property is transferred from seller to buyer. A sold the car to B, so ownership, and with it the bundle of rights over the car, passed to B at that point. B then separately asked A to hold the car for a month as a favour. This subsequent arrangement is a bailment for safekeeping, not a condition on the sale itself. Since the transfer of ownership had already occurred, the sale stands complete.
2. Sale of car is not complete: This would only be true if some right of ownership had not yet passed to B, but nothing in the facts suggests that. A agreeing to keep the car for B does not undo or delay the transfer that already took place; it merely changes who holds physical custody, which is a separate question from ownership.
3. Sale will be completed when B keeps the car in his own care: This wrongly equates legal ownership with physical possession. The principle ties completion of sale to transfer of property (ownership), not to the buyer physically holding the item. B can own the car while someone else, including the seller, holds it on his behalf.
4. Sale will be automatically completed after the expiry of one month: This introduces a time-based trigger that appears nowhere in the principle or the facts. The one-month period was simply the duration for which A agreed to store the car, not a waiting period before ownership passes.

Since A had already sold the car to B before the storage arrangement was made, ownership had already shifted, and the later request to keep the car does not reopen or delay that transfer.

Therefore, the correct answer is Sale of car is complete.

Answer 3

The principle breaks property into four constituent rights, the right to possess, the right to use, the right to alienate, and the right to exclude others, and it says a sale is complete once these rights pass from seller to buyer. Applying that checklist to the facts, before checking the options, helps confirm exactly what happened between A and B.

1. Sale of car is complete: A sold the car to B, meaning the whole bundle, right to possess, use, alienate and exclude others, had already passed to B before the storage request was even made. A's subsequent role in keeping the car for a month was undertaken purely at B's request, as a caretaker, and did not require B to hand any of those four rights back. Since every element of the principle's own definition of property had already shifted to B, the sale meets the completion test in full.
2. Sale of car is not complete: For this to be true, at least one of the four rights, possession, use, alienation, or exclusion, would have to still sit with A. Nothing in the facts withholds any of them from B; A only holds the car physically as a favour, which is not the same as retaining ownership rights.
3. Sale will be completed when B keeps the car in his own care: This option quietly substitutes physical custody for the rights the principle actually lists. None of the four rights the principle names, use, alienation, exclusion, or even possession in the legal sense, depend on who is holding the keys; B can hold the right to exclude everyone else, including deciding when to take the car back from A, without physically having it.
4. Sale will be automatically completed after the expiry of one month: The one-month period appears only as the length of the caretaking arrangement A agreed to, not as a condition attached to any of the four rights in the principle. There is no rule here that ties completion of a sale to a time period elapsing.

Checking the facts against each of the four rights the principle uses to define property shows all of them had already passed to B when A agreed to store the car, so nothing about the sale remains incomplete.

Therefore, the correct answer is Sale of car is complete.