Page 320 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NATURAL LAW
Yet, Grotius leaves much to be asked. Is there a difference in liability depending on whether the sold object was a movable or immovable? It seems that Grotius still maintained a different liability regime for servitudes. After all, he does not distinguish between a knowing or unknowing seller of the encumbered land, so that both seem liable for price reduction at most. This open end may be due to a lack of resources while writing the Inleidinge. On the other hand, Grotius' seemingly loose style perhaps again betrays a lack of interest in the issue involved, which would fit well with Grotius' earlier detected natural law-approach in which he reasoned that any breach of contractual fairness has to be amended, regardless of the seller's faith or the kind of thing sold. Exactly how the breach should be repaired is something Grotius does not dwell upon.179 That said, this in its turn does not explain why Grotius holds sellers of land with servitudes of which they were aware only liable for price reduction.
An effort to define more precisely the legal consequences of a breach of fairness in exchange with regard to the sale of a defective item is outlined in French legal scholarship. Yet, the natural law scholar Domat does not approximate the liability for encumbrances to that for latent defects. Alternatively, he seeks to streamline it with the liability for eviction and places both liabilities under the same header of 'garantie'.180 The seller of a later evinced or otherwise 'troubled' thing is liable for reimbursement of the price paid and for damages the buyer might have suffered as a result of being evinced, irrespective of the seller's faith.
'\[10\] Si la vente est resolue par une éviction, le vendeur est tenu de rendre le prix, et d'indemniser l'acheteur des dommages et interêts qu'il en pourra souffrir. Ainsi qu'il sera expliqué dans les articles suivans... \[11\]... Et dans se cas, soit que la vente subsiste, ou qu'elle soit resolüe, le vendeur doit les dommages et interêts selon l'effet du trouble (D. 21.2.70)'.181
Without paying heed to all that has been said throughout the ages by scholars versed in the medieval ius commune about the difference in liability for encumbrances depending on the knowledge of the seller, Domat accepts full liability under all circumstances. He simply ignores the Digest texts in which the seller's liability is determined by his good or bad faith.182 Domat picks out what suits his needs to come to a coherent liability regime based on 'garantie' and discards without qualms what does not.183
van alle dienstbaarheden/ofte anderssints is ghehouden te vergoeden 't gunt de kooper daer aen was geleghen...(For the seller must deliver to the buyer the thing sold free of all servitudes or otherwise he is bound to compensate the buyer for how much he would have bought the thing...)'.
179 Cf. previous section.
180 Domat, Les lois, 1.2.10, no. 3, p. 153: 'L'acheteur évincé, ou troublé, ou en peril de l'être, a son recours
contre le vendeur, qui doit le garantir. C'est à dire, faire cesser les évictions, et les autres troubles,
comme il sera dit dans les articles qui suivent'.
181 Domat, Les lois, 1.2.10, no. 10-11, p. 156.
182 D. 18.1.59, D. 19.1.41 and D. 19.1.21.1.
183 Domat, Legum delectus, ad D. 19.1, no. 2, p. 202: 'Venditor, si, cum sciret deberi servitutem, celavit, non
evadet ex empto actionem: si modo eam rem emptor ignoravit. Omnia enim quae contra bonam fidem fiunt, veniunt in empti actionem, l. 1, par. 1'; Domat likewise passes over a treatment of title D.21.1 in his Legum delectus. He discusses the remedies for latent defects in title D. 19.1, thus indicating that the ius
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