Page 309 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER SIX
as it was perceived in Thomasius' age. Penalties are hard to chime with the natural purpose of contracts, sc. the realisation of fairness in exchange.
In the same vein, Pothier acknowledges that it is in general contrary to natural equity when a creditor gains more than the damages he incurred because of the debtor's not having lived up to the contract. Penalties can never exceed the maximum amount of damages the creditor would possibly have incurred because of the debtor's malperformance.122 Pothier invokes the same equity to dismiss the possibility to sue debtors separately for the entire performance in the event multiple debtors are bound to the same debt.123 As contracts are to be interpreted in favour of the debtor, they in general rule out an implicit liability in solidum. Debtors must explicitly have agreed on such a liability.124
Heinrich von Cocceji, however, altogether rejects the natural law scholars' disregard for specific traits which the ius commune-remedies for breach of contractual fairness possess. First, he explicitly doubts that something as fairness in exchange exists in the ius gentium.
'It is not true (1) that equality governs contracts..., (5) that the law of nature must correct whatever inequality, and that the law of nations has decreed to correct the more significant but not the trivial'.125
Cocceji's main argument is that civil laws are and rightly should be brought into being to prevent controversies irrespective of whether these laws conform with natural law principles. There are other criteria than the wish to uphold fairness in exchange which justify the existence of various remedies for defects in the thing sold. Apparently, the Roman lawgivers had found it necessary to come to the aid of buyers by means of granting them penal remedies and the right to sue each seller individually for the entire performance. Furthermore, procedural economy could have induced the aediles to grant the aedilician remedies irrespective of the seller's bad faith, which feature of the aedilician
nititur: quatenus autem iure civili Romano nititur'.
122 Pothier, Obligations, vol. 1, no. 345, p. 426: '...peines excessives doivent être réduites à la valeur vraisemblable à laquelle peuvent monter au plus haut les dommages et intérêts du créancier resultants de l'inexécution de l'obligation primitive; cette decision doit avoir lieu dans les contrats commutatifs, parce que l'équité qui doit regner dans ces contrats ne permettant pas que l'une des parties profite et s'enrichisse aux dépens de l'autre, il seroit contraire à cette équité que le créancier s'enrichit au dépens du débiteur, en exigeant de lui une peine trop excessive et trop manifestement au-dessus de ce qu'il a souffert de l'inexécution de l'obligation primitive'; idem, no. 164, p. 188; this view is at odds with the generally accepted view in ius commune that agreed penalties could be exacted regardless of the amount involved. Azo, Summa, to C. 7.47, no. 11, p. 763; Bartolus, Commentaria, to C. 7.47, no. 21, fo. 87-87v; Brandsma, 'Some Remarks', p. 5.
123 Tucked away in a chapter about the fideiussor. Pothier, Obligations, vol. 1, no. 419, p. 549: 'l'équité qui ne permet pas qu'entre plusieurs qui sont tenus également d'une même dette, l'un en soit plus poursuivie que les autres'; idem, no. 282, p. 329: 'l'équité qui ne permet pas que ses codébiteurs profitent à ses dépens de la libération d'une dette dont ils étoient tenus comme lui'.
124 Pothier, Obligations, vol. 1, no. 265, p. 287: 'La solidité peut être stipulée dans tous les contrats... Mais régulierement elle doit être exprimée'.
125 Cocceji, Introductio, diss. 7, 4.14, p. 111: 'Verum non est (1) in contractibus aequalitatem spectari... (5) Iure naturae quamlibet inaequalitatem corrigi debere: iure gentium vero id de majori, non leviore statutum esse'; Klempt, Grundlagen, pp. 48-49.
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