ANNOTATED TEXT OF CISG
Article 84

(2) The buyer must account to the seller for all benefits which he has derived from the goods or part of them:

(a) if he must make restitution of the goods or part of them; or

(b) if it is impossible for him to make restitution of all or part of the goods or to make restitution of all or part of the goods substantially in the condition in which he received them, but he has nevertheless declared the contract avoided or required the seller to deliver substitute goods.

Legislative history || Case law || Scholarly writings || Links to related articles || Words and phrases || CISG (full-text)

Guide to this article

• UNCITRAL outline of issues present
  
• Editorial analysis of this article with cross-references to related subjects [not yet available]
  
• Secretariat Commentary (closest counterpart to an Official Commentary on this article)
• Match-up of this article with the 1978 draft
(to validate Secretariat Commentary)
• Use of the Principles of European Contract Law to help interpret CISG article 84(1)
  • Match-ups with Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence
• CISG-Advisory Council Opinion No. 9: Consequences of Avoidance of the Contract

• Roadmap to the legislative history of this article
• Legislative history of this article: long form
• Legislative history of this article: short form
  • Chronology of development of Article 84 at the 1980 Vienna Diplomatic Conference
• Summary of UNCITRAL legislative history
• Hague Convention antecedent
  • Article 84 match-up with ULIS
  • ULIS (full-text) and André Tunc Commentary on ULIS
  • See also the Report of the Special U.S. Committee, dated 1 December 1964,
    explaining why the United States elected not to adopt either ULIS or ULF

• CASES INVOLVING CISG ARTICLE 84
  • Computer list of annotated cases

• For a companion report on CISG case law and other material, go to Unilex: click for description of and link to this excellent service

• See also:
  • UNCITRAL digest

  • UNCITRAL digest + added cases

• Selected monographs and anthologies
• Comments on Article 84 from seminal 1986 text by Peter Schlechtriem [Germany]

• Comments on Article 84 from monograph by Jacob S. Ziegel [Canada]

• Comments on Article 84 by Denis Tallon [France] in 1987 Bianca-Bonell Commentary on the International Sales Law
• Comments on Article 84 by John O. Honnold [U.S.] in the 3rd ed. (1999) of the most frequently cited text on the CISG: Uniform Law for International Sales
• Comments on Article 84 in December 2000 text by Joseph Lookofsky [Denmark / U.S.]
• Commentarios al Articulo 84 sobre textos de 2001 por Pilar Perales [España]

• Perspectives on Effects of Avoidance: Chengwei Liu [China], 2nd ed. case annotated update (June 2005)
• See also the helpful Enderlein & Maskow text (cited below under the words and phrases section of this Annotated Text material)

• Citations to materials on this article in other texts (selected texts only)
• Selected law journal articles and other commentaries
• Michael G. Bridge [United Kingdom], The Nature and Consequences of Avoidance of the Contract Under the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods, 10 International Law Review of Wuhan University (2008-2009) 118-128
• Ana M.López-Rodríguez, The Duty to Pay Interest on Advance Payments under Art. 84(1) CISG, Nordic Journal of Commercial Law, Issue 2005 #2

• Jelena Vilus [Yugoslavia], Provisions Common to the Obligations of the Seller and the Buyer, in: Sarcevic & Volken ed., International Sale of Goods: Dubrovnik Lectures, Oceana (1986) 239-264

• Supplementary list of citations to Article 84 commentaries: Unilex citations*

  * Most members of the Autonomous Network of CISG Websites also offer bibliographies. Many are tailored, concentrating on commentaries by authors from or writing on CISG issues of special interest to specific countries or regions; some, e.g. CISG online are general and extensive; some, e.g., CISG-Belgium and CISG-Finland also list commentaries by individual articles of the CISG.

• To identify other relevant commentaries, go to the cisgw3 Bibliography and Bibliography Search Form [avoidance, cancellation, remedies, restitution and interest are search form entries you may wish to consider]

  Bibliography citations on restitution

  Citations on cancellation

  Citations on avoidance

  Citations on remedies

  Citations on interest

  We also encourage you to tailor your own cisgw3 bibliography search to the specific aspect of this article that you are researching.*

  * The cisgw3 bibliography contains over 500 pages of citations. Analyzing these listings can pay dividends.

Links to related articles

Attention to related articles and to the CISG in its entirety is important. This is an autonomous law, i.e., it is meant to be construed within its four corners. When considering aspects of the CISG, because this law relies heavily on general principles, one ought to look at related provisions and the CISG in its entirety.

• Article 84(1) pertains to interest; for a related provision, go to Annotated Text of Article 78 [Interest on sums in arrears]

• Article 84 is part of the section entitled, Effects of avoidance. This section contains four articles. For links to the other three articles, go to Annotated Text of Article 81 [Effects of avoidance on obligations; arbitration; restitution]; go to Annotated Text of Article 82 [Buyer's inability to return goods in same condition]; go to Annotated Text of Article 83 [Preservation of other remedies]

• A related section is entitled, Preservation of the goods. Links to this material are to be found with the Annotated Texts of Articles 85 through 88.

Words, phrases and concepts

• The Enderlein & Maskow text is a good place to commence words and phrases research. Click for their analysis of words, phrases and concepts in this article.

  See also:

• reasonableness: Although not specifically mentioned in this article, reasonableness is a general principle of the CISG
  • For the definition of reasonableness recited in the Principles of European Contract Law and references to reasonableness in Continental and Common Law domestic rules, doctrine and jurisprudence, go to PECL article 1:302 and the comment and notes prepared for this provision

  • To drive home the correlation between the PECL's definition of reasonableness and the evident same meaning of this term to CISG legislators when they used the concept either specifically or as a general principle of the uniform law they drafted, see overview comments and comments that illustrate the similar manner in which this concept fits the CISG

For a Doctoral thesis on "Reasonableness" in International Commercial Law, go to Guillaume Weiszberg, Le "Raisonnable" en Droit du Commerce International [pour le doctorat en droit de l’Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), 7 novembre 2003]