Page 246 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

EARLY MODERN DUTCH LAW
By emphasising that 'a true estimation' should be allowed to be made, Noodt comes close to requiring a proper balance between the item sold and its value expressed in money. A prerequisite for a true estimation of the purchase price is that the buyer is as equally well informed about the object's quality (aequalitas intellectus) as the seller.155 The aedilician edict had its own distinct function in safeguarding this equality by imposing duties to inform on the seller and enabling an easy ironing out of irregularities. The penal character of the remedies ensured the latter, even though penalties do not easily rhyme with the natural law theory by which Noodt seems to be inspired.156 Similarly, Noodt leaves the fact untouched that the aedilician remedy for returning the thing could be brought against the seller who had the largest share in the sale.157
Additionally, Heineccius perceives the aedilician edict as an example of Roman law reaching the highest standards of equity (aequitas). Having outlined the aedilician remedies, Heineccius in a rhetorical piece lauds them as the most apt remedies for safeguarding equality in contracts.
'Now what is more equitable than all these actions, what could be more sound? If it is equitable that the administration wages a most glorifying perpetual war against vices and fraud, who, I ask, waged a war more pure and pious than the aediles... Next, if it is equitable and good to safeguard equality in contracts for something, who has been more protective than the aediles who did that in a unique way, so that the seller would not be cheated in an unseemly manner by the buyer, nor the other way round, in order that neither would benefit from their cunning and shrewdness? Finally, if man decreed laws to protect his property, appointed magistrates and judges, sanctioned penalties, what could the aediles have done more soundly and righteously than to dispossess villainous people each time riches have been accumulated at the expense of other man's property and the fortunes of others are overthrown? I assure you, together with the most inexperienced persons, to be well aware of what those who attribute these statements to some hot-headed perception of equity understand by something equitable and righteous.'158
155 Cf. Noodt, Commentarius, in: Opera omnia, vol. 2, to D. 21.1, p. 450 \[center right\]: 'Bonae frugi venditorem, nec commodorum spem augere, nec incommodorum cognitionem obscurare oportere'; for the influence of natural law thinking on Noodt's work see Van den Bergh, Gerard Noodt (1647-1725), p 131.
156 Gotius, IBP, 2.20.14.
157 Noodt, Commentarius, in: Opera omnia, vol. 2, to D. 21.1, p. 457 \[bottom left, top right\]: '... est poenalis
in duplum... Non tantum adversus eum qui vendidit, sed etiam "adversus eum cuius maxima pars in venditione fuerit"; Van Eck mentions the same characteristics. Van Eck, Principia, vol. 2, no. 10-11, 25, p. 34.
158 Heineccius, Ad aedilitium edictum, 3.9, pp. 91-92: 'Iam quid his omnibus actionibus aequius, quid salubrius esse potest? Si aequum est magistratus pulcherrimum perpetuumque bellum cum vitiis et fraudibus gerere: quis quaeso sanctius magisque pium umquam bellum gessit quam aediles... Si deinde in contractibus onerosis aequalitatem servari aequum et bonum est: quis eius umquam servantior fuit aedilibus qui id egerunt unice, ut nec venditor ab emtore, nec hic ab illo, turpiter circumscriberetur, adeoque neuter ex vafritie ac calliditate sua fructum caperet? Denique si homines rerum suarum servandarum caussa leges tulerunt, magistratus ac iudices constituerunt, poenas sanxerunt: quid salutarius iustiusque agere potuissent aediles, quam, dum occasionem omnem opes ex aliena re adcumulandi, aliorumque evertendi fortunas, hominibus nequissimis adimebant? Sane qui haec omnia ad aequitatem cerebrinam referunt, ii, quid per aequum et bonum intellexerint, fateor me scire cum
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