Page 327 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER SIX
the seller - or buyer - of immovables could rescind.213
Domat's view means that a breach of contractual fairness has to be solved by other
means than the remedy for lesion beyond moiety. As a consequence, the remedies for latent defects and for eviction come to the fore. Again the attention shifts away from the thing's price to the thing's quality as the decisive factor in determining whether or not someone has a remedy because of a breach of fairness in exchange.214
6.3.2 Doctrinal arguments against fairness in exchange
Other, more doctrinal, arguments against the remedy for lesion beyond moiety as a means to safeguard justice in contracts are furnished by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)215, Barth von Harmading, Heinrich von Cocceji and Thomasius. As a matter of fact, these scholars discard the remedy because they no longer acknowledge fairness in exchange as a requirement for contracts to be just.
Hobbes argues that the 'right of nature, which writers commonly call ius naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature'.216 Reason guides man in the use of this liberty to avoid doing things which go against his self-preservation. Principles derived from that use of reason are called laws of nature.217 Men who are able to exercise their natural right (liberty) enter into contracts not because of a wish to form a just society, as Grotius contended, but only to ensure their own well-being. Admittedly, Hobbes calls it a fundamental law of nature that man seeks peace, by which his self-preservation is best served. Yet, the only demand posed by natural law on a contract seems to be that it preserves peace.218 If a party to a contract freely agrees to buy for less than the object's market price, the contract is nonetheless valid. Natural law does not demand fairness in exchange based on a price which can be objectively determined irrespective of the contracting parties' wishes. On the contrary, according to Hobbes, 'the value of all things contracted for, is measured by the appetite of
lésion, à moins qu'elle ne soit énorme, ce qui a été sagement établi pour la sûrete et la liberté du commerce, qui exige qu'on puisse facilement revenir contre les conventions; autrement nous n'oserions contracter, dans la crainte que celui avec qui nous aurions contracté s'imaginant avoir été lésé, ne nous fît par la suite un procès'; Pothier, Vente, vol. 1, no. 242, p. 237.
213 Pothier, Vente, vol. 1, 5.2, no. 330, p. 324: 'l'égalité étant de la substance des contrats commutatifs, du nombre desquels est le contrat de vente, l'iniquité qui s'y rencontroit, et la lésion que l'une des parties souffroit, rendoit ces contrats vicieux et sujets à rescision. C'est en conséquence de ces principes que la loi 2, Cod. de resc. vend. accorde au vendeur une action rescisoire...'; Pothier, Obligations, vol. 1, 1.3.4, p. 50: 'La raison de ce droit peut être que nos pères faisoient consister la richesse dans les biens-fonds, et faisoient peu de cas des meubles: de-là vient que dans la plupart des matieres de notre Droit François, les meubles sont peu considérés....ce commerce seroit troublé, si on admettoit la restitution pour cause de lésion à l'égard des meubles'; for the seller idem, no. 375, p. 368.
214 See 4.3.4.
215 For biographical data see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <plato.stanford.edu> entries >
hobbes>.
216 Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.14, p. 64.
217 Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.14, p. 64: 'A Law of nature is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by
which a man is forbidden to do that, which is destructive of his life'.
218 Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.14, p. 65.
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