Page 315 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER SIX
not transfer possession of the object leased out to the lessee and, secondly, because the action on the lease contract already sufficiently provides for a situation in which the leased out thing appears to be defect, so these adversaries of extension argue.151 This opposition would be carried through until the dawn of the first civil codes and even beyond with scholars such as Johan Ludwig Schmidt (1726-1792)152 and Anton Friedrich Justusu Thibaut (1772-1840)153 repeating the same arguments.154
6.2.3 Increased liability
Ius commune-doctrine adhered to the idea that a seller in good faith could not be held liable for more than the price paid by the buyer. Early modern scholastic scholars went further and even hesitated to grant remedies against sellers in good faith at all.155 Early modern Castilian scholars who wrote for the forum externum similarly neglected the situation in which both buyer and seller were unaware of any defect. If both parties were unaware of the defect, the only situation where a remedy was granted, was if the defect had caused a contracting party to suffer a lesion beyond moiety.
The scholastic idea that every liability requires fault is exported into the writings of Wolff. Nowhere does he discuss whether or not a remedy lies against the seller who did not know about the defect in the thing sold.156 Liability for defects which are latent is, if there is no lesion beyond moiety, according to this version of natural law, hard to imagine. Wolff lucidly summarizes the fact in his Ius naturae when he discusses the lessor's liability for leasing out a defective thing exclusively in terms of faulty behaviour:
151 Carpzov, Opus decisionum, dec. 222, no. 22, p. 465: 'Unde in locatione haut obtinet actio redhibitoria, quia scilicet conductor usum tantummodo habet, non rem ipsam'; Strauch, Dissertationes Aedilitiae, cap. v, nr. III, p. : '...ad edictum autem Aedilium id nullatenus pertineat, quippe quo tantum rei alienatae redhibitio permittitur, ut recte notat P. Busius Jctus doctissimus in notis ad l. sciendum 63, ff., de aedil. edict \[D. 21.1.63\]'; Lauterbach, Resolutiones legum, tit. 21.1, q. 1, p. 433; Collegium theoretico- practicum, to D. 21.1, no. 6, p. 157: 'Cessat etiam hoc Edictum in rebus locatis et conductis, l. 63, h.t. \[D. 21.1.63\]. Ratio est, quia redhibitoria praesupponit, quod res iure dominii, vel ad minimum quoad possessionem, translata sit; sed in locatione conductione ne possessio quidem transfertur; l. 39, ff. \[D. 19.2.39\], l. 34 C. de locat et conduct. \[C. 4.65.34\] et praeterea conductori, qui rem accepit vitiosam, satis prospectum est actione ex contractu, vel renunciatione, rei desertione et exceptione, Bach. d. D. t. lo. 1, lit. h., Frankzk. h.t. n. 45, Perez, in C. h.t., n. 9. Non obst. l. antep. C. de loc. et cond. \[C. 4.65.34\], Cuj., l. 12, O. 38, Mev. p. 2, decis. 380, n. 1; Stryk, Usus modernus, vol. 3, to D. 21.1, § 4, p. 678: 'Annon ob rem vitiosam locatam conductori nullum datur remedium? Datur sane actio conducti, qua idem consequitur, quod actione aedilitia obtinere potuisset'; Titius, Iuris privati, 4.20.3, p. 562; Hahn, Observata, vol. 2, to D. 21.1, no. II, p. 37: 'Non itaque locum habet in caeteris contractibus, ut in... locatione conductione etc'.
152 For biographical data see A. von Eisenhart, 'Schmid, Johann Ludwig', in: ADB 31 (1890), p. 671.
153 For biographical data see E. Landsberg, 'Thibaut, Anton, in: ADB 37 (1894), pp. 737-744.
154 Schmidt, Praktisches Lehrbuch, § 936: 'Hierwider kann zur Ausflucht vorgeschüßt werden, 1) daß Kläger
die Sache umsonst erhalten hätte, (§ 932), 2) daß durch den Contract kein Eigenthum auf Klägern gekommen (§ 932)'; Thibaut, System, I, par. 190, p. 148: 'Es kann bey allen Geschäften deßhalb die Contracts-Klage auf Rescission des Geschäfts, oder Verminderung der Gegenleistung angestellt werden. Durch ein Edict des Aedilen wurden ... noch zwey besondere Klagen... gestattet, und dießward in der Folge auf alle, das Eigenthum nicht unentgeltlich übertragenden, nicht aber auf andere Geschäfte ausgedehnt, wiewohl bey diesen die Contracts-Klagen dieselben Dienste thun'.
155 See 3.5.
156 Wolff, Ius naturae, 4.4, § 1044 and § 1045, p. 727-729: 'Vitiae rei, qua in oculus non incurrunt... emtori
indicare tenetur venditor'.
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