Page 139 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

EARLY MODERN CASTILIAN LAW
influenced Castilian scholars writing about positive civil law. On the other hand, scholars writing for the forum internum applied a long period within which the penitent could restore his conscience through restitution, but a short one for the worldly forum.265
Commentators on the statute and legal scholars endorse the four-year period for a lesion beyond moiety committed without fraud which the Nueva Recopilación provides. Gómez gives a plain account:
'Likewise add that the remedy laid down in C. 4.44.2 according to civil law lasted for 30 years, since it was derived from a contract and a personal action, which remedy dies after that period, as in C. 7.39.3pr. and C. 7.39.4pr. and the Gloss to C. 7.39.3.1... However, today in our kingdom the said remedy of C. 4.44.2 only lasts for four years. Such is provided for by provision four, title seven, from the fifth book of the Royal Ordinances of Castile266'.267
Padilla y Meneses, Albornoz and Villadiego are of the same opinion.268 Piñel is also in favour of a short period of limitation because the longer the period within the remedy can be brought, the more difficult to determine the thing's just price. One should also be suspicious toward persons who claim to have been prejudiced beyond moiety after a long period. Practice, Piñel adds, often comes across false testimonies in this respect, so that it seems wise to reduce the period within which the remedy for lesion beyond moiety can be brought.269
Covarrubias, however, refutes the statutory four-year period and advocates the 30- year period supported by ius commune-scholars. 'This is closer to the truth and the more
265 Molina, De iustitia et iure, vol. 1, disp. 67, no. 4, p. 157: '... quemadmodum iure civili licite sancitum est, ut nullo modo audiatur, qui laesionem infra dimidium iusti pretii in emptionis et venditionis contractu obtenderit, esto, qui laesit, in foro conscientiae eam laesionem restituere teneatur, idque, quoniam si ea actio concederetur, multiplicarentur lites gravioraque mala Reipublicae imminerent: sic etiam, si Reipubl. judicaretur expediens, in aliquo eventu nullam omnino actionem transacto certo tempore concedere, licita enim lex, quae eam omnino denegaret'.
266 Ordenanzas Reales de Castilla 5.7.4 (= Nueva Recopilación 5.11.1).
267 Gómez, Variae resolutiones, lib. 2, cap. 2, nr. 22, p. 218: 'Item adde quod remedium praedictae l. 2 de
iure communi durabat per 30 annos, cum esset obligatio et actio personalis, qua tanto tempore tollitur, ut in l. sicut in rem et in omnem, Cod. de praescript. 30 vel 40 ann. et tenet glo. ordinaria in d. l. 2. 1. quaest.... Sed hodie in nostro regno remedium praedictae l. 2 tantum durat per quatuor annos, ita disponit notabilis lex 4, tit. \[7\], lib. 5, Ordin.'; Padilla y Meneses, In quaedam, no. 47, fol. 78r: 'Quare generaliter statuendum est hodie quadriennium tantum durare beneficium huius legis'; Albornoz, Arte, tit. VII, p. 55: '... y la action competa desde el dia de el contracto hasta en quatro años y se entienda en la venta, estando la cosa vendida biva y no mui empeorado, porque si lo esta no se puede demandar'; Molina, Opera omnia, vol. 2, disp. 349, no. 15, p. 234.
268 Padilla y Meneses, In quaedam, to C. 4.44.2, no. 47, fo. 78; Albornoz, Arte, 2.7.2, fo.55: 'la Action competa desde el dia de el \[sic\] contracto hasta en quatro años'; Villadiego Vascuñana y Montoya, Instrucción, ch. 8, no. 111, fo .154v: 'Y este remedio se ha de intentar dentro de quatro años del día de la venta y no después'.
269 Pinelus, Ad rubricam, to C. 4.44.2, 1.3, no. 26, p. 262: 'Fortasse prudenter restrictum fuit tempus huius actionis cuius vis consistit in precio et valore rerum. Id autem tempore mutatur, ut docet experiencia.... Nec videtur suspicione fraudis carere qui post longum tempus se laesum quaeritur. In praxi etiam saepe deprehenditur in his et aliis falsa probatio: ex quibus consultius videtur restringere tempus huius actionis'.
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