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Concept
Privity of contract
Summary
The doctrine of privity of contract is a common law principle which provides that a contract cannot confer rights or impose obligations upon anyone who is not a party to that contract. It is related to, but distinct from, the doctrine of consideration, according to which a promise is legally enforceable only if valid consideration has been provided for it, and a plaintiff is legally entitled to enforce such a promise only if they are a promisee from whom the consideration has moved.
A principal consequence of the doctrine of privity is that, at common law, a third party generally has no right to enforce a contract to which they are not a party, even where that contract was entered into by the contracting parties specifically for their benefit and with a common intention among all of them that they should be able to enforce it. In England & Wales and Northern Ireland, the doctrine has been substantially weakened by the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, which created a statutory exception to privity, providing, in certain circumstances, third parties the right to enforce terms of contracts to which they are not privy.
Privity of contract occurs only between the parties to the contract, most commonly
contract of sale of goods or services. Horizontal privity arises when the benefits from a contract are to be given to a third party. Vertical privity involves a contract between two parties, with an independent contract between one of the parties and another individual or corporation.
If a third party gets a benefit under a contract, it does not have the right to go against the parties to the contract beyond its entitlement to a benefit. An example of this occurs when a manufacturer sells a product to a distributor and the distributor sells the product to a retailer. The retailer then sells the product to a consumer. There is no privity of contract between the manufacturer and the consumer.
This, however, does not mean that the parties do not have another form of action: for instance, in Donoghue v.
Official source
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