Caveat emptor Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo established that privity of duty is no longer required in regard to a lawsuit for product liability against the seller. This case is widely regarded as the origin of "caveat venditor" as it pertains to modern tort law in US. "Caveat lector" is Latin for "let the reader beware". One variant of this phrase is "caveat auditor", where the caveat is addressed to any receiver of a given (kind of) message (not necessarily a written one). Caveat emptor Caveat emptor (, ) is Latin for "Let the buyer beware" (from "caveat", "may he beware", a subjunctive
Caveat emptor recover only the damages that s/he would have suffered had s/he taken all feasible steps to minimize ("mitigate") his/her damages suffered. As a default rule, the perfect-tender rule may be "contracted around" in ways that specify or limit a buyer's remedies (and that accordingly reduce the market price that rational buyers are willing to pay for the goods). In many cases, the vendor will not provide a refund but will provide store credit. In the cases of software, movies, and other copyrighted material, many vendors will offer only a direct exchange for another copy of the same title, with the