Page 181 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER FOUR 4.2.1.4 Favourable characteristics of the aedilician remedies
Oldendorp identifies two features of the aedilician remedies which make them more favourable to the buyer who brings them than the civil remedies. First, in the event of multiple sellers, the buyer who brings an aedilician remedy for returning the thing can claim from each seller the entire sum (in solidum) paid for the defective thing. The civil remedy holds each seller liable for his personal share (pro parte), so that the buyer who brings an actio empti would have to sue all sellers separately for their share to get back the entire sum he paid.98 It is worth noting that Oldendorp drops the fact that the Roman law text D. 21.1.44.1 on this matter only refers to sellers joined in a partnership with the purpose to sell slaves (societas veneliciorum). Neither does Oldendorp interpret the text as generally referring to sellers who jointly sell an object and for that reason form a societas, as Baldus had done. Dumoulin and Cujas also leave out these details in their interpretation of D. 21.1.44.1.99
How this rule was engrained in legal practice is demonstrated by Dumoulin. Though there is an authentica in the Justinian Code which decrees that sellers can only be held separately accountable for the entire sum, if the other sellers are not capable of fulfilling their shares, Dumoulin observes that notaries by default exonerate from that rule. In so doing, they restored the aedilician edict's rule that sellers are at all events liable for the entire sum.100
Secondly, Oldendorp interprets D. 21.1.45 in which the seller who does not return the price or refuses to deliver accessories is condemned for the double (in duplum) as referring to a penalty of double the price paid. Oldendorp ascribes this penal character to both the remedy for returning the thing and the remedy for price reduction.101 Despite endorsing the view that the buyer can sue for double the price, Sichardus and Cujas' teacher Loriot limit the condemnation for the double to the remedy for returning the thing.102 Cujas subscribes
98 D. 21.1.44pr. and D. 21.1.44.1: ...ne cogeretur emptor cum multis litigare, quamvis actio ex empto cum singulis sit pro portione... ; Oldendorp, Progymnasmata, p. 266, no. 4: 'Si plures fuerint venditores, singuli in solidum tenentur'.
99 Dumoulin, De aedilitiis actionibus, 2.44-45, p. 212; Cuiacius, Opera omnia, vol. 1, p. 778 D: 'Ac praeterea dantur in unum e multis cuius maior pars in venditione fuit, aut nulla parte minor, l. 44 §. 1 \[D. 21.1.44.1\]... '.
100 Dumoulin, De aedilitiis actionibus, 2.45, p. 212: 'at iure novissimo Authenticorum considerato, quamvis in solidum se obligassent, attamen unusquisque pro sua portione conveniretur, nisi in casu absentiae vel inopiae alterius correi, auth. hoc ita, C. de duobus reis. \[Auth. post C. 8.39(40). 1-2\]. Cauti tamen Notarii hodie solent ex generali stylo quamvis a partibus non rogati, ponere clausulam, quod rencunciat beneficio novarum constitutionum etc'.
101 Oldendorp, Progymnasmata, p. 267, no. 10: 'Alias in simplum, alias in duplum exercentur istae actiones. Nam si neque pretium reddat, neque accessionem solvat venditor quum ex redhibitione receperit quae sua sunt dupli pretii et accessionis condemnatur. Alioquin in aliis speciebus simpli condemnabitur. Idem dicendum est de judicio Quanto minoris, l. redhibitoria, ff, de aedil. edict. \[D. 21.1.45\]'; similarly, Balduinus, Commentarii, to. D. 21.1.23.4, p. 108, and Wesenbecius, In pandectas, to D. 21.1, no. 9.
102 Sichardus, Dictata, to C. 4.58.2, no. 7, p. 476: 'si venditor per contumaciam nolit obedire sententiae, condemnabitur deinde in duplum'; Loriot, Commentaria, p. 318: '...actionem redhibitoriam semper in duplum competere, cum omnia non redhibentur: civilis vero actio in id quod simpliciter interest competit, quod interesse licet aliquando possit esse usque ad duplum, tamen Ulpianus innuit et illud saepe minus esse'.
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