Page 60 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn
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CHAPTER TWO
way by which a sale, once concluded, could be attacked in Visigoth law. A Visigoth formula from the beginning of the 12th century supports this view, as it similarly emphasised the need that a sold slave be free from defects. There are no signs that a just price is required.106
The same combination of exclusion of the remedy for lesion beyond moiety and acceptance of remedies for latent defects can be found in the eight-century Lex Baiwariorum with the addition that fraud allows for a rescission.107 Almost 500 years later, the Fuero Juzgo, an early 13th century translation of the Liber iudiciorum which served as a kind of model legislation for Spanish municipalities which aspired to a local statute (in Castilian: fuero)108, still explicitly denies the seller the right to rescind the sale because of having sold the thing for too low a price.109
A further sign of reservation towards the remedy for lesion beyond moiety can be gathered from 13th and 14th century Castilian legal practice. Although in the Fuero Real (1250) the lawgiver granted the remedy for lesion beyond moiety to sellers110, judges in Toledo dismissed appeals to the pertinent provisions, stating that
'we renounce... the new laws ordained by king Alfonso, may God pardon him, in the Cortes of Alcalá de Henares in which he states that a sale concluded for more or
Honorio N.P. et Evodio V.C. coss.; interpretatio: quum inter emtorem ac venditorem de mancipii pretio convenerit et fuerit conscripta venditio, nullatenus poterit revocari, nisi forte ille, qui emit mancipium, probaverit fugitivum et tunc habebit licentiam pretium recipere'.
106 Zeumer, Formulae, p. 580-581: 'Definito et accepto a vobis omne praetium...nihil penitus de eodem praeto apud te remansisse polliceor. Et tradidi tibi supra memoratum servum non causarium, non fugitivum, non vexaticium neque aliquod vitio in se habentem nec cuiuslibet alterius dominio pertinentem...'; for an interpretation of the terms used in this formula see Olaitz, 'El contrato de compraventa', p. 312-322.
107 Lex Baiwariorum, 16.9, p. 437: 'Sed postquam factum est negotium, non sit mutatum; nisi forte vitium invenerit, quod ille venditor celavit... '; also Grotius acknowledged that the 'ancient Germans' abhorred restitution because of lesion beyond moiety as a breach of the bona fides. Grotius, Florum sparsio, to C. 4.44.2, p. 343.
108 Tomas y Valiente, Manual, p. 162
109 FJ 5.4.7 = LI 5.4.7, in: Los códigos españoles, vol. 1, p. 143 and 37: \[FJ\] 'Si algun omne vende
algunas casas o tierras o vinnas o siervos o animalias o otras cosas, non se deve por ende desfazer la vendicion, porque diz que lo vendiò por poco'; \[LI\] 'Venditiones hace forma servetur, ut seu res aliquae sive terrae, vel mancipia, vel quodlibet animalium genus venditur, nemo propterea firmitatem venditionis inrumpat, eo quod dicat rem suam vili pretio vendidisse´.
110 FR 3.10.5seq., in: Los códigos españoles, vol. 1, p. 388: 'Ningun home no pueda desfacer vendida que faga, por decir que vendió mal su cosa, maguer que sea verdad, fuera ende si la cosa valia quando la vendió mas de dos tanto de por quanto la dió: ea por tal razon bien debe desfacer toda la vendida si el comprador no quisiere cumplir el precio derecho, segun que valia: ea en poder es del comprador de desfacer la vendida, ó de dar el precio fecho, è de tener lo que compró'.
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