Page 186 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn
P. 186

LEGAL HUMANISM
Hotman lets the matter drop at this point. The more inquisitive reader, however, might wonder what exactly stands in the way of resolving the lease contract so that both parties are restored in their legal positions before the lease was concluded. After all, why could a restitutio in integrum not be carried out in the sense that the lessee restores the lessor to his former position by returning the leased item and the lessor the lessee by means of paying back the rent? Hotman imagines a situation in which the lessor has not received any rent yet, for which reason he cannot return anything to the lessee. Thus, the actio redhibitoria cannot be brought. However, one could think that a remedy for returning the thing could also entail the discharge of the lessor from his duty to pay the rent, so that in that sense he will be put in the position he had before having concluded the lease contract. Hence, despite Hotman's assertion to the contrary, his views are in severe need of additional arguments to make them feasible. These, however, he does not provide.121
It may come as no surprise that other humanist scholars present arguments against Hotman's repudiation of extending the aedilician remedy for returning the thing to lease. One of them was Cujas. It is in his dealings with the same question that we can see a mind at work that made use of all the new insights current at the time. Greek texts, textual criticism and deductive reasoning; all are set to work to argue in favour of the application of the aedilician remedies to the lease contract.
Cujas begins with emphasizing the similarities between the contracts of sales and lease.
'The sales and lease contract are closely linked, so they say, and they derive from the same principles of law, D. 19.2.2. However, no interpreter of the law has as of yet dared to extend the aedilician edict, which is about sales, to lease, and Ulpian states in D. 21.1.63 that it is remarkable that the aediles themselves have not decreed the same for lease as what they have for sales.'122
ut locator aedes suas recipiat, & recedamus à locatione et conductione?... Sed videamus ne dissimilatio sit. Nam cum redhibere sit efficere, ut quod utrimque habetur, utrimque reddatur: l. redhibere, 21, D. de aedil. edict. \[D. 21.1.21\]. commodissime post rescissam emtionem et venditionem, re ab emtore, pretio a venditore reddito, redhibitio dicitur, quoniam uterque habebat... in locatione et conductione non dicimus habere, sed frui... neque vel qui locat dimittendae, vel qui conducit adipiscendae possessionis animum habet... Non mirum est igitur, si ubi non habetur, ibi non redhibeatur. Altera caussa est, quia in emtione et venditione par et habitationis et redhibitionis ratio est. Tantundem enim a venditore habet emptor, quantum ab emptore venditor cum pretium per aequalitatem quantitatis rem exaequet: ut ait Paulus L. I. D. de contr. emt. \[D. 18.1.1.1.\] Itaque ut contractus parem utriusque rationem efficit, similiter redhibitio quae contractus rescissio est, parem utriusque statum efficit... At in hoc contractu dissimilis in utramque partem ratio est. Nam neque merces rem exaequat, neque si redhibitio fieret, par utraque ex parte ratio esset. Redderet enim inquilinus domum, hoc est ius utendi per quinquennium: locator vero, vel nihil, si nondum mercedem accepisset: vel si unius anni praeorogativam accepisset, tamen quod redderetur, cum quinquennio comparandum non esset: ut unico casu paratum aliquid in redhibendo videretur, nimirum, si conductor totius quinquennii pensionem praerogasset. Verum in re perspicua, quid opus est argumentis?'
121 Cf. Klempt, Grundlagen, p. 24.
122 Cuiacius, Opera, vol. 3, p. 358: 'Habent, ut dicitur, familiaritatem inter se emptio, venditio,et locatio,
conductio, eisdemque iuris regulis consistunt, l.2.ff.loca. Nec tamen adhuc ullus extitit iuris interpres qui edictum aedilicium, quod est de emptione venditione auderet porrigere ad locationem et conductionem, et aediles ipsos mirum esse Ulpianus ait in l.sciendum est, ff. de aedil. edict...'.
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