Page 206 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

LEGAL HUMANISM
should conform to the symmetrical equality which is required between buyer and seller.211 Clearly, Dumoulin has the early modern scholastic theory in mind. As we have seen, that required fairness in exchange which was expressed in a price. The price had to be objectively determined and had to correspond with the value of the thing traded. Hence, Dumoulin's explicit rebuttal of a subjective price determination. Indeed, in French legal practice of the time, price estimation was carried out by experts agreed upon by parties or nominated by the judge.212
Though in his gloss to C. 4.44.2, Cujas again equates real and just - the real price must be just - Cujas does not reveal on what the price's fairness should be based.213 Cujas does not commit himself to statements about how the just price should be assessed, since he believes that to be a question of fact.214 He does not further explain this remark. It might be that Cujas does not want to go into details about how the common market price should be assessed by either experts or witnesses, if the common market price is indeed what Cujas understands by the just price.
4.3.4 Extension to buyers, movables, and lease
Oldendorp, Dumoulin, Doneau and Mynsinger mention that the remedy for lesion beyond moiety is available to both buyer and seller.215 Contemporary statutes in the German regions have the same.216 In his Recitationes in libros IV. priores Codicis, Cujas, contrariwise, seems to reserve the remedy for lesion beyond moiety for the seller only. He argues that hardship (necessitas) can force men to sell their family estates at too low a price, whereas no one forces someone to buy for a disproportionate price. Consequently, save minors, buyers cannot rescind a sale because of lesion beyond moiety.217 Yet, the
211 Molinaeus, Commentarii, §33, gl. 1, in verb. Droict de relief, no. 46, p. 438: ‘... quando de laesione et rescissione agitur, iustum pretium ad tantam pecuniam aestimatur, quantum res iuste valet, non quantum repertum fuit aut reperiri posset... Et debet esse aequalitas, et eadem commensuratio inter emptorem et venditorem et eadem iuris summetria; quoted in Decock, Theologians, p. 463.
212 De la Combe, Recueil, lemma 'Restitution', §3, no. 11, p. 330: 'L'estimation se fait par Experts convenus ou nommés par le juge'.
213 Cuiacius, Opera, vol. 2, p. 278 D: 'Iusti pretii. Iustum pretium dicitur in d.l. 2 and 8. Verum d.l. 2. quod idem est. Sic Basilica verum pretium in l. 20. §. quod si post. D. de pet. hered. \[D. 5.3.20.16\] δίκαιον τίμημα vertunt, iustum pretium lib. 42. Basil. tit. I. \[B. XLII, 1, 20\]'; in an effort to come to grips with Cujas' notion of fair (iustus), I consulted various passages in the Opera omnia edition of Fabrot. However, nothing was revealed as to what it entails. Cf. Cuiacius, Opera omnia, vol. 5, p. 559 C; vol. 6, p. 485 C; vol. 9, p. 1074 D; vol 10, p. 192 A.
214 Cuiacius, Opera, vol. 9, p. 375 A: 'Quaeritur etiam quae sit definitio justi pretii: verum haec quaestio in facti probatione tantum consistit: igitur nihil ad nos. Id tantum scimus in universum, aestimandam esse qualitatem rei venditae et quantitatem redituum. Nam ex quantitate redituum statuitur justum pretium, l. 16 hoc. tit. l. si fundum per fideicommissum de legat. 1.
215 Oldendorp, Progymnasmata, p. 249, no. 7, p. 251, no. 7; Molinaeus, Commentarii, §33, gl. 1, in verb. Droict de relief, no. 46, p. 438; Mynsinger, Observationium centuriae, 4.73, no. 3, p. 193; Donellus, Ad codicis partes, to C. 4.44.2, no. 17, p. 210.
216 Langer mentions the Würtembergische Landrecht (1555) and the Solmser Landrecht (1571) in: Langer, Laesio enormis, p. 59.
217 Cuiacius, Opera, vol. 10, p. 1005 E: 'Et vero omnes leges loquuntur de venditore fraudato, nulla de emptore fraudato: verum obtinuit quod tamen miror, ut sint producendae ones illae leges ad emptorem, quae de venditore loquuntur. Verum ut intelligatur quanto errore id fiat, animadvertendum est, aliam esse conditionem emptoris, aliam venditoris: venditor enim plerumque coactus rei familiaris necessitate, rem
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