Page 230 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

EARLY MODERN DUTCH LAW
concepts of dolus incidens and dolus dans causam contractui. As long as there is no fraud which would have brought the buyer not to conclude the contract at all (dolus causam dans contractui), the seller does not need to rescind the contract. In the event of such incidental fraud (dolus incidens), a price reduction suffices.73 However, Grotius does not relate the remedies to the seller's fraudulent behaviour.
Grotius' obscure passage is also found with Simon van Leeuwen (1626-1682).74 He not only copies Grotius' words, but also provides us with an example of how the price reduction was calculated. Suppose someone sold a pig for slaughter and the meat turned out to be tainted. How then should the meat's value be estimated?
'Someone who sells an animal for slaughter which during the slaughter is found unwholesome, which cannot be judged from the animal's outside, has to compensate the buyer for the amount that the inspectors, or, to put it differently, fact-finders judge that it is worth less because of that. This, unless the meat is contagious to such an extent that it could not be wholesomely consumed. It is also to the inspectors or fact- finders, who are appointed in each city, to decide in which cases the animal may be returned and the price claimed back, D. 21.1.2.1-3'.75
Thus, when push comes to shove, Van Leeuwen chooses for the objective approach; professionals had to tax the value of the contaminated meat. In his Censurae, he adds that this was not only the use in Holland, but in Saxony as well.76
Vinnius by using the Latin legal terminology that traditionally indicated the objective standard also seems to opt for an objective estimation of price:
'The remedy for price reduction does not lie for a rescission of the sale, but for a reduction of price based on how much less the thing was worth at the time of the sale. The buyer must be compensated for only that.'77
He uses the words, 'res fuit', or, 'how much the thing was worth', which formula had since Accursius already been accepted as indicating an objective assessment. Still, Vinnius in his work states nowhere explicitly with this phrase which calculation method applies.
quod praestiti in illo loco et tempore quo fui', quoted by Schorer in: Dertig rechtsgeleerde vraagen uit de
Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Regtsgeleerdheid van wylen mr. Hugo de Groot (Mensert 1778), xiv.
73 Hallebeek&Decock, ‘Pre-contractual duties', p. 127; Decock, Theologians, p. 276; gloss hoc ipso to
D. 4.3.7pr., in: De la Porte, Corpus iuris civilis, p. 390.
74 Van Leeuwen, Het Rooms-Hollands regt, 4.18.2, p. 372; For biographical data see J. van Kuyk,
'Leeuwen, Simon van, Jacobus', in: NNBW, vol. 1, pp. 1261-1262.
75 Van Leeuwen, Het Rooms-Hollands regt, 4.18.12, p. 377: 'Yiemand een Slagt-beest verkoopende, het
welk in 't slagten ongans bevonden werd, om dat daar van uytterlijk niet en kan worden geoordeelt, moet den verkooper aan den koop-schat soo veel laten korten, als de Keurmeesters, anders geseid, Vinders, daar van oordelen dat het daarom minder waardig is, ten zy dat het soodanig besmet is, dat self het vlees met geen gesondheid sou kunnen genuttigt werden, staande meede aan het oordeel van de Keurmeesters, ofte Vinders, in elke Stad daar toe gesteld, in welkken geval het Beest weder mag gegeven, ende den geheelen prijs werder geeyst mag werden, l. 3, §I&3, ff. de aedilit. edict.'
76 Van Leeuwen, Censura, 4.18.17: 'prout etiam in foro Saxonico indistincte decisum refert Carpzov. defin. Forens. part. 2, constit. 34, defin. 15, post Coler\[us\], id., part. 2, decis. 228, num. 2 et num. 9.'.
77 Vinnius, Jurisprudentiae contractae, to D. 21.1, p. 160: 'Actio quanto minoris competit... non ad hoc, ut emptio rescindatur, sed ut quanto minoris propter vitium res fuit, cum emeretur, tantum restituatur emptori'.
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