Page 273 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER FIVE
Roman law' that the remedy is brought under the action on the sales contract. He accordingly subscribes to a 30-year limitation of the remedy for lesion beyond moiety and not to the four year limitation bound to a restitutio in integrum.289
In keeping with the views of Doneau and refuting Cujas', the Roman-Frisian scholar Wissenbach takes the remedy for lesion beyond moiety as a remedy which is brought under an action on sales, lease, or other bona fide contract. Consequently, it lasts for 30 years.290 Ulrik Huber is of the same opinion and explicitly dismisses Cujas' view that the remedy lasted only for four years which was based on a restoration of the parties to their former position.291 Westenberg also considers the remedy as a variant of the action on the sales contract.292
5.3.2.1 Legal practice
Bijnkershoek reports a 1730 case in which the buyer of a plot of land sues for lesion beyond moiety. In first instance, he had requested a mandate to carry out a restoration of the parties into their former position.293 This request is granted and confirmed in appeal.294 Hence, it seems that the Supreme Court adopted Groenewegen van der Made's view that the remedy involves a restitutio in integrum. However, whether the Supreme Court likewise provided the remedy with the four-year period which Groenewegen van der Made ascribed to, can not be told from what Bijnkershoek writes in his Observationes.295
Contrary to what seems the Supreme Court's position, Roman-Frisian legal practice opts for the 30-years period of limitation of the remedy for lesion beyond moiety. Van den Sande dismisses Cujas' view that the remedy for lesion beyond moiety is an extraordinary remedy and as such had to be brought within a shorter period than that of the ordinary action on the sales contract. Drawing support from the works of Wesenbeck and Piñel, Van
289 Van der Keessel, Theses, to 3.52.4-5, p. 272: '\[4\] Ob enormem tamen laesionem tam minori, quam majori laeso usquae ad 30 annos succurri, et ex iure Romano facile probatur et iuris nostr anologia confirmatur, conf. th. DCCCLXXXI. \[5\] Ex veriore quidem iuris Romani sententia remedium l. 2, C. de rescind. vend. \[C. 4.44.2\] est ipsa actio ex contractu; sed usu fori apud nos obtinuit ut adhibeatur per modum in integrum restitutionis, Goeneweg. ad d. L. 2 \[Groenewegen van der Made, Tractatus, to C. 4.44.2, p. 151\]'.
290 Wissenbach, In libros quattor, to. C. 4.44.2, p. 770: 'Sed actione empti venditi, locati conducti, etc, intra triginta annos, arg. l. 2. C. de pact. int. empt. et vend. in Accurs. \[Gloss dabitur to C. 4.54.2, in: De la Porte, Corpus iuris civilis, p. 724\], Don. \[Donellus, Ad codicis partes, to C. 4.44.2, no. 10, p. 206\], Gipham.\[Giphanius, Explanatio, to C. 4.44, p. 315\], Sand. decis. 4, def. 11 \[Van den Sande, Decisiones, 3.4, def. 11, p. 204\]'.
291 Huber, Praelectiones, to D. 18.5, no. 8, p. 968: 'Actio quae ex hoc remedio datur, non alia videtur esse, quam emti venditi... nec proin breviori quam XXX. annorum spatio finitur, Sand. d. tit. 4, def. 11 \[Van den Sande, Decisiones, 3.4, def. 11, p. 204\]. Non est igitur condictio ex lege, multo minus in integrum restitutio '; idem, Positiones, to D. 18.5, no. 10, p. 208.
292 Westenberg, Principia, vol. 1, to D. 18.5, no. 9, p. 705; idem, De causis, dis. 4, ch. 6, §6, p. 150.
293 Bijnkershoek, Observationes, vol. 3, no. 2562, p. 391: 'Deinde ait se ultra dimidium fuisse laesum, non
sine insigni dolo Maevii. Quare impetrat mandatum restitutiones in integrum'.
294 Bijnkershoek, Observationes, vol. 3, no. 2562, p. 391: 'Sed et adversus haec petita \[sc. the seller's
defense\] erat restitutio in integrum, et recte petita, si dolus et laesio ultra dimidium probetur. Paribus
igitur suffragiis sententia Curiae probata fuit'.
295 A similar request for a restitutio in integrum is observed in Bijnkershoek, Observationes, vol. 3, no. 2209;
Pauw, Observationes, vol. 2, no. 1044nov., p. 373; Brom, Grundlagen, p. 242, p. 332 (resolution). 265