Page 118 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER THREE
Similar to Castilian legal doctrine, also early modern Castilian civil law seems to have ruled out a penal character of the aedilician remedies, be it already at much earlier date. The Siete Partidas do not mention any penal character the remedies supposedly possess. Neither does López mention anything to this point in his gloss to the Siete Partidas.180
With regard to whether the Castilian legal remedies for latent defects allow to sue each of multiple sellers of one thing for the entire performance, the picture is unclear. A 1438 constitution incorporated in the Nueva Recopilación seems to rule out this possibility. Only by means of a contractual agreement can it be brought about that each of the sellers can be held liable for the entire performance.181
Hevia Bolaño also seems to dismiss that the remedies for latent defects in the event of multiple sellers of one thing can be instituted against each one in solidum. In his Laberinto it seems that it must have been agreed in advance between parties that they buy or sell in solidum and are accordingly liable:
'When there are two or more sellers or buyers of the thing in its entirety, every single one of them can by this way \[sc. in solidum\] sue or be sued or for returning the thing or for price reduction;...'182
3.3.1.4.1 Legal practice
In keeping with the little attention Castilian legal doctrine paid to the favourable characteristics of the aedilician remedies for latent defects, Castilian practice did not do so either. At least, I have not encountered case law of the Royal Chancery in which any reference is made to particular buyer-friendly traits the aedilician remedies might have had vis-à-vis the other available remedies in the event of latent defects, such as those available in the event of laesio enormis or an actio empti.
3.3.2 Extension to lease
More theologically orientated scholars scarcely discuss whether the aedilician remedies could be extended to other contracts than sales. Molina treats the issue to a certain extent, but does not speak out explicitly about the matter.183 However, this did not stop the Portuguese scholar Fagundez from citing Molina as an authority in favour of an extension of the aedilician remedies to lease.
'To what we have said until now, Molina rightly adds three things in book 2, disputation
180 SP 5.5.64-65 and López ad loc., in: Los códigos, vol. 3, pp. 632-632.
181 Nueva Recopilación 5.16.1 = Novísima Recopilación 10.1.10, in: Los códigos, vol. 9, p. 306:
'Establecemos que si dos personas se obligaren simplemente por contrato o en otra manera alguna para hacer y cumplir alguna cosa, que por ese mismo hecho se entienda ser obligados cada uno por la mitad; salvo si en el contrato se dixere que cada uno sea obligado in solidum... y esto no embargante qualesquier leyes del Derecho comun que contra esto hablan'.
182 Hevia Bolaño, Laberinto, 1.13.32ff, pp. 155-156: 'Quando son dos o mas vendedores o compradores insolidum, puede cada uno desta manera convenir y ser convenido por la redhibitoria o quanto minoris;...'.
183 Molina, De iustitia, vol. 2, disp. 353, no. 5, p. 244: '...similiter intelligenda sunt in permutatione et in aliis contractibus, ut paret l. sciendum, §. pen., ff. de aedil. edict. \[D. 21.1.63\]'.
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