Page 277 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER FIVE
lease.320
Ulrik Huber also applies the remedy to all objects and to both buyer and seller.321
Yet, he dismisses its extension to lease, since 'deceit in that contract is not of such consequence, because it pertains only to the thing's use and to the price corresponding to that use and not, as in sales, to property'.322 The somewhat younger Westenberg again applies the remedy to all bona fide contracts.323 All in all, Roman-Frisian legal scholarship seems far removed from a 'pure' application of Justinianic Roman law. In the various positions taken, medieval ius commune is the order of the day.
5.3.4.1 Legal practice
Bijnkershoek and Pauw mention various cases in which a buyer contends to have been prejudiced for more than half the thing's just price. 324 However, contrary to what contemporary doctrine might suggest, there are no cases of lease in Roman-Dutch legal practice in which either lessor or lessee starts proceedings on the grounds of being enormously prejudiced. It might well be that disputes over lease are solved with the contractual remedy.
Roman-Frisian legal practice accepted the remedy's extension to lease and buyers. In keeping with the views of Doneau and Giphanius, Van den Sande holds that the buyers can bring a remedy for lesion beyond moiety, since the buyer can also be forced by destitution, e.g., by extreme hunger, to buy for a disproportionate price. The granting of the remedy thus depends on the likeliness that a party might suffer a huge prejudice. In that, there is no distinction between buyer or seller. The Frisian Provincial Court applies the remedy likewise.325 With regard to its extension to other contracts, Roman-Frisian legal practice seems to accept extension to bona fide contracts, but not to contracts of strict law.326
320 Wissenbach, In libros quattor, to. C. 4.44.2, p. 766.
321 Huber, Praelectiones, to D. 18.5, no. 3, p. 986; idem, Positiones, to D. 18.5, no. 7, p. 208; idem, Rechts-
geleertheyt, 3.4.6, pp. 359-360.
322 Huber, Praelectiones, to D. 18.5, no. 3, p. 986: 'Nec ll. eadem est in locatione conductione ratio, quia
circumventio in hoc contractu non est tanti praejudicii, cum ad usum modo et mercedem usui
respondentem, non ut emptio venditio, ad proprietatem...'.
323 Westenberg, Principia, vol. 1, to D. 18.5, no. 13, pp. 705-706.
324 Bijnkershoek, Observationes, nos. 62, 2562; Pauw, Observationes, no. 1044nov.
325 Van den Sande, Decisiones, 3.4, def. 13, pp. 208-209: 'quia etiam emptor saepe necessitate coactus
carius et pluris quam oportuit, res alterius emit. Nec beneficium personae, sed caussae est tributum, nempe laesioni... ut notat Hugo Donellus, ad d. l. 2, num. 7 \[Donellus, Ad codicis partes, to C. 4.44.2, no. 17, p. 210\]'; in a 1636 case about lease Nauta reports that 'the Court undoubtedly understood that the remedy based on C. 4.44.2 is applicable here'. Nauta, Decisiones, q. 29, p. 55: 'Zoo is by den Hoove ongetwyffelt verstaan het beneficiae dol. 2, alhier plaats te hebben'.
326 Zacharias Huber, Observationes, vol. 1, obs. 46, p. 169: 'Van den Sande, Decisiones, 3.4, def. 17, p. 213: 'Atqui contractus praedictus non est emptio venditio, uti certo pretio destitutus, nec est alius aliquis bonae fidei, sed omnino contractus innominatus... Curia igitur Actores ab intentione sua repulit ita concepta sententia... 5 Maii, anno 1627'.
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