Page 239 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER FIVE
The word redhibitio in this indicates the simple fact that the seller must take back the item after the sales contract has been rescinded with the action on the contact. Wissenbach does not provide concrete examples, but one might think of a rescission because of breach of a given warranty or execution of a pactum displicentiae.122 The bona fide contract of sales implies that the seller takes back the thing and returns the price paid. Hence it is said that the civil action on the contract contains a redhibitio. Coming with the action on the sales contract, this duty can be evoked by the seller over a similarly long period. This has nothing to do with the aedilician remedy for returning the thing, so Wissenbach believes. Despite being one of the Roman-Frisian scholars who were reputed to apply Roman law texts 'purer' than their colleagues in other Dutch provinces, Wissenbach almost word for word repeats the Accursian Gloss in point.123
Wissenbach's interpretation is carried further by his student and Roman-Frisian scholar Ulrik Huber. Although Huber indiscriminately refers to title D. 19.1 and to title D. 21.1, he discusses their content as features of one action on the sales contract. When that action is brought for defects, it receives some of its characteristics from the aedilician edict, for instance, its limitation periods and the fact that the action on the contract for defects can also be instituted against sellers in good faith. When the action on the sales contracts is brought on other grounds, e.g. to claim damages for non-performance, it answers to texts in D. 19.1. For example, a requirement for the action for all damages is that the seller must have acted in bad faith in accordance with text D. 19.1.13pr. about rotten beams and contagious cattle.124 We can therefore assume that where Huber only mentions the aedilician limitation periods, he deliberately ignores the 30-year civil limitation period. Similar to Vinnius and Doneau, Huber dresses the civil remedies for latent defects in the cloths of the aedilician edict.
It is hard to qualify Wissenbach's and Huber's interpretations as a 'purer and plainer'125 application of Roman law. Both are rooted - either as a denial or endorsement -
vitiumve rei comperens, sed simplex redhibitio, rescissa venditione per actionem empti, obtinenda, ut in aed. l. §. si quis virginem, 3, Acc. in d. §3 \[Gloss contineri to D. 19.1.11.3, in: De la Porte, Corpus iuris civilis, p. 1478\]',
122 Buckland, A text-book, p. 492: 'an agreement that the buyer might reject the goods if, on trial, he found them unsatisfactory'; D. 18.5.6; D. 19.5.20pr; D. 21.1.31.22.
123 Gloss contineri to D. 19.1.11.3, in: De la Porte, Corpus iuris civilis, p. 1478: 'Ut ex empto agant ad redhibendum, i. ad resolvendum conractum... non tamen dico quod pro vitiis et morbis agi possit iure civili ad redhibendum'.
124 Huber, Rechts-geleertheyt, 3.5, nos. 41-42, p. 369: '\[41\] Voor de verborgene gebreeken moet de verkooper staen, het zij dat se hem bekent zijn geweest of niet, met dit onderscheidt nochtans; als hy de faute wel geweeten heeft, soo moet hy niet allen de prijs, maer ook al den interest by den kooper gehadt ende geleeden goedt maken ende betalen, maer als hy des gebreks onbewust is geweest, soo is hy tot de prijs wederomme te keeren alleen gehouden, D. 19.1.13pr. \[42\] Hy kan ter oorsake van dese gebreeken aenspreeken, of om het goedt wederom te neemen ende de koop te vernietigen, of aen hem te betalen soo veel al het goedt minder weert is, met sijn interest, gelijk vooren gemelt is (actio redhibitoria, quanti minoris). \[43\] De eerste aenspraek moet geschieden binnen 6 maenden, om de sake self ende binnen 2 maenden, om het byspel van zadel en toom ens. de tweede aenspraek moet binnen een jaer geschieden, nae Keysers recht, D. 21.1.1.1, D. 21.1.38pr., D. 21.1.22/23/27/29 \[Huber's emphasis\].
125 Huber, Rechts-geleertheyt, vol. 1, 1.2, no. 47, p. 8; see 5.1. 231