Page 293 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER SIX
Thus, inequality as a result of a latent defect must also be rectified, but not because a latent defect constituted a special ground for a remedy, but because a breach of contractual equality resulted from it.
In his De iure belli ac pacis, Grotius does not elaborate on how compensation for a latent defect should take place. This is not so difficult to comprehend, if we keep in mind the shift of thinking that came with the natural law current. Overarching concepts determine what is allowed and what is not.25 It is left to legal practitioners to work out the legal tools to shape that outcome. This can either be by bringing in the aedilician remedies, the remedies on the contract, the remedy for lesion beyond moiety or a mix of these. As observed in the previous chapter, Castilian scholastically inspired scholars reserved the remedy for lesion beyond moiety as the most apt for all instances in which contractual equality had been breached by more than half the just price, even if a latent defect had caused the breach.26
In his Inleidinge Grotius merely mentions that there are remedies for returning the thing and price reduction in the event 'some defect' occurs. Moreover, a buyer can sue for lesion beyond moiety.27 However, one should not draw conclusions lightly from what is written in the Inleidinge, since even the scholar himself admitted that he was often at a loss due to insufficient sources available to him while writing his introduction to Holland's legal system.28 It is nevertheless noteworthy that Grotius mentions 'some defect' and does not bring up for discussion which kind is meant. This fits in with Grotius' discussing contractual remedies as means to restore a breach of fairness in exchange (onevenheid).29 No longer what caused the breach but the breach itself determines what claims the prejudiced party has against the party causing the breach.
Pufendorf likewise emphasises the need of equality between performances in contracts. The first professor to hold a natural law chair ever, from 1661 to 1668 in Heidelberg30, Pufendorf states that this requirement implies that the seller tell the buyer about defects in the thing sold in order that the just price can be properly determined, since 'it is otherwise impossible to rightly determine the just price'.31 In the same vein as
in contractu id utrimque propositum aut fuit aut esse debuit, ut uterque tantundem haberent \[my
emphasis\]'; similary, Vitriarius, Institutiones, 2.12.16, p. 286; Klempt, Grundlagen, p. 34.
25 Cf. Klischies, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung, p. 70; Otte, Francisco de Vitoria, p. 12-15.
26 Notably De Vitoria, Usuros y contratos, p. 109. See 3.5.
27 Grotius, Inleidinge, 3.15.7, p. 553: 'eenig gebrek'; idem, Inleidinge, 3.52.2: 'Maar met ter tyd de eigen
baatzoekinge alle maat van redelykheid te buiten gaande, heeft inbindinge van noode gehad, en is overzulks eerst goedgevonden, dat de verkooper, die voor het gekochte minder hadde bedongen, dan de helft was van de rechte waarde van hetzelve, doe het verkocht werd, den kooper zouden mogen aanspreken om den koop te breken... 't welk bevonden zynde in billykheid te bestaan, door de gewoonte is uitgestrekt tot de koopers'.
28 'Mirari non debet claritas vestra, si mihi non ea, quae tibi fuere nota adminicula multum est. Potuisse me praestare quod praestiti in illo loco et tempore quo fui', quoted by Schorer in: Dertig rechtsgeleerde vraagen, xiv.
29 Grotius, Inleidinge, 3.1.15, 17, pp. 196-197.
30 H. Breßlau, 'Pufendorf, Samuel', in: ADB 26 (1888), pp. 701-708.
31 Pufendorf, De iure naturae, 5.3.2, p. 700: 'citra enim justum pretium liquido constitui non potest'; idem,
De officiis hominis, 1.15.6, p. 238; Klempt, Grundlagen, p. 40. 287