Page 183 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER FOUR
hardly discern that the two contracts differ', as Oldendorp contemplates. He continues:
'Just consider, if I come to an agreement with a goldsmith that he makes rings out of his gold of a certain weight and of a certain mould and he accepts, let us say, 300, is it then a sales contract or a contract to perform a specific work? These facts alone constitute a transaction and it comes closer to the sales contract. However, if I supply the gold and there is a reward for work carried out, it is undoubtedly locatio conductio'.108
We observed medieval scholars turning their minds over the idea of applying the aedilician remedies outside the scope of the sales contract. Already the Accursian Gloss and Bartolus discussed the lessor's liability in the light of the aedilician liability rules. Yet, they concluded that the aedilician remedy for returning the thing was not available under lease, because nothing has been conveyed to the lessee who, consequently, cannot return anything. After all, he only received the item's use. Hence, he can not fulfil the obligations coming with an actio redhibitoria.109
This literal reading of D. 21.1.63110 finds many a humanist advocate. François Baudouin (1520-1573)111 almost literally repeats the Gloss and Bartolus.112 Dumoulin also based his exclusion of the actions' applicability to lease on Bartolus' interpretation of the Digest text. In addition, he refers to the medieval commentator Baldus to strengthen his case.
'For lease Baldus gives two explanations. First, the aediles did not have the competence to legislate on lease. Secondly, lease is not the same as sale, which explanations the jurist Modestinus ponders in D. 21.1.63. After all, the lessee accepts the enjoyment of the thing, but not the thing itself, D. 4.9.5pr. And since redhibitio is meant to restore the situation from before the contract, D. 21.1.60, it is nothing to wonder about if the edict does not cover lease, because if someone does not possess the thing, he cannot restore it, D. 21.1.23pr. No, the lessee ceases to have the enjoyment of the thing, which he had accepted by lease before'.113
108 Oldendorp, Progymnasmata, p. 456: 'adeo ut in quibusdam duo isti contractus vix discerni posset. Ecce enim, si cum aurifice mihi convenerit, ut is ex auro suo anulos mihi faceret certi ponderis, certaque formae et acceperit \[verbi gratia\] trecenta, utrum emptio et venditio, an locatio et conductio sit? Sed unum hoc est negotium, et magis ad emptionem et venditionem accedit. Quod si ego aurum dedero, mercede pro opera constituta: dubium non est, quin locatio et conductio sit, l.1 et l.2, ff. locat. et conduct'.
109 See 2.2.2.
110 D. 21.1.63: Ulpianus libro primo ad edictum aedilium curulium: Sciendum est ad venditiones solas hoc
edictum pertinere non tantum mancipiorum, verum ceterarum quoque rerum. Cur autem de locationibus nihil edicatur, mirum videbatur: haec tamen ratio redditur vel quia numquam istorum de hac re fuerat iurisdictio vel quia non similiter locationes ut venditiones fiunt.
111 A. Wijffels, 'Baudouin, François, in: Dictionnaire, pp. 51-52.
112 Balduinus, Commentarii, to D. 21.1.63, p. 139: 'Ac locatio nec dominium mutat, nec possessionem (l. non
solet, locati. \[D. 19.2.39\])'; Schrader too sticks to this view. Cf. Schrader, Commentarius, ch. 24, no. 112,
p. 364.
113 Molinaeus, De aedilitiis actionibus, 2.7, p. 200: 'In locatione duplicem assignat Bal. rationem. Primo, quia
aediles non praeerant iurisdictioni locationum. Secundo, quia non similiter locatio fit ut venditio, quae rationes consideratae sunt a Iurisc. Modest. in l. Sciendum est, hoc tit. \[D. 21.1.63\]. Conductor enim accipit usum rei et non rem, l. Nauta, ff. naut. caup. et stab. \[D. 4.9.5pr.\] et cum redhibitio sit in pristinum
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