Detailed Explanation
Moldy Mozzerella invokes the following laws.
1. A merchant must stand behind his/her product even if he/she did not know that the sold merchandise was faulty [Choshen Mishpat 232: 18].
2. Recourse for blemished or mistaken merchandise is permitted even years after the sale. [Choshen Mishpat 232:3].
3. Even a merchant in the supply chain who presumably will never be aware of the functionality of the merchandise is nevertheless required to stand behind the merchandise he/she sold (see below for exception) [Choshen Mishpat 232: 18, Rema].
4. Upon receiving mistaken or faulty merchandise, the consumer assumes certain shomer/trustee responsibilities towards the article.
As such, when the end user fails to notice the poor quality of the product and/or fails to inform the merchant in a standard time span, he/she can inadvertently cause the unassuming merchant a loss, for which the consumer may assume liability.
At times; a stitch in time can save nine, whereby enabling the merchant due time to return poor quality merchandise to the supplier before the article loses complete functionality.
If the consumer was duly negligent in noticing and notifying the unassuming merchant; to the extent that the merchant can no longer return the merchandise to the supplier, and the merchant can prove that he/she did not previously know about the blemish, the merchant will be absolved from compensating the consumer [Choshen Mishpat 232: 18, Rema, Nesivos 10, Choshen Mishpat 232: 22].
5. Three days after purchasing cheese from B, A discovered severe spoilage.
Responsible investigation should be used to determine when the cheese began to spoil. If it can be ascertained that spoilage began prior to the sale, A can annul the sale. If it remains questionable, the money remains as status quo until proven otherwise [Choshen Mishpat 232:16]
Application
Delicious Distributors delivered the wrong product to Camp Adventure and are required to deliver the correct product.
However, Camp Adventure assumed trusteeship over the shredded cheese. If accepted protocol required that inventory be taken immediately upon receiving the cheese delivery, then Camp Adventure was negligent in their not doing so.
Their responsibility included notifying Delicious Distributors about their mistake before the cheese spoiled, whereby enabling Delicious Distributors to sell the cheese to another customer or pass them back to the manufacturer. By not doing so, they were negligent in their trusteeship and must swallow the loss, provided that Delicious Distributors can prove that they did not know about the mishap.
Delicious Distributors must swallow the loss if the camp was not irresponsible in not notifying them before spoilage or if they knew that they sent the wrong merchandise.
If we could determine that the spoilage began before delivery, and earlier notification would not have profited the distributor, the camp will receive compensation regardless of when they informed the distributor.
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