Page 364 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CODES OF CIVIL LAW
aims:
Troplong, in his commentary on the Code civil describes the first duty as la garantie de droit and the second as la garantie de fait. The latter Troplong interprets as concerning the seller's duty to deliver a thing without latent defects.140
The Code civil and its interpreters thus dogmatically separate the duties to perform and to safeguard from defects and ensure the thing's peaceful possession. Unlike the ALR and as we will later see the ABGB, the Code civil does not consider a breach of a safeguarding duties as a breach of the duty to perform.
7.3.3 Limitation periods
Despite the fact that the Code Civil's general articles on contract law breath natural law, the Code civil, initially, did not contain fixed periods of limitation for remedies lying for a breach of the seller's duty to safeguard from latent defects but made them depend on local custom. Article 1648 only demands that the buyer brings a remedy within a short period of time, determined by the nature of the defect and local custom.141 In the sixth chapter of this book, it was observed that, according to Pothier, the periods which were in use for horses and cows in the Bourbonnais, the region around the city of Moulins, only lasted for eight days. Domat also referred to comparably short periods.142 In keeping with Pothier and Domat, Boileux (1802-1872) in his commentary of 1844 on the Code civil confirms that commercial interests demand a short period for bringing a remedy.143
The Code civil neither states whether the limitation periods start to run at the moment of the delivery of the thing sold or only upon the defect's discovery. Troplong, who had a rather low opinion of the moral rectitude of his fellow Frenchmen when involved in litigation, favours the first to avoid a buyer's haggling over the period. He notes that that had also been the approach taken in various Coûtumes.144
However, in 1838, things changed. A statute was promulgated that harmonised the limitation periods for sales of all domesticated animals.145 As a result, remedies for some
139 Art. 1625 Cc.
140 Troplong, De la vente, vol. 1, no. 412, p. 504.
141 Art. 1648 Cc (1804): L'action résultant des vices rédhibitoires, doit être intentée par l'acquéreur dans un
bref délai, suivant la nature du vice rédhibitoire, et l'usage du lieu où a été faite la vente.
142 See 6.2.1.4.
143 Boileux, Commentaire, vol. 3, to art. 1648 Cc, p. 282: 'la sûreté du commerce exigeat qu'on n'accordât
qu'un bref délai our exercer les actions'; for biographical details see <www.thesaurus.cerl.org>.
144 Troplong, De la vente, vol. 2, no. 586, p. 54: 'il dépendra toujours de l'acheteur de dissimuler, afin de proroger le temps de la préscription. Autant vaudrait-il que la loi n'eût pas fixé de délai fatal.... Au surplus, la question se trouve singulièrement préjugée par le texte de plusieurs coutumes qui, en parlant des vices rédhibitoires des chevaux, déclarent ouvertement que ce n'est pas du jour où l'acheteur a connaissance du vice que court la déchéance'; Marcadé, however, quotes a case in which the judge
decided otherwise. Marcadé, Explication, vol. 6, to art. 1649, no. 2, p. 295, no. 1.
145 Journal du Palais, vol. 1, p. 591: 'La qualification d'animal domestique se tire de la nature et de
'La garantie que le vendeur doit à l'acquéreur a deux objets: le premier est la possession paisible de la chose vendue; le second, les défauts cachés de cette chose ou les vices rédhibitoires.'139
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