Page 366 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CODES OF CIVIL LAW
consequential loss due to the defect.
This problematic aspect would also turn up in civil codes based on the Code civil
such as the Dutch Burgerlijk Wetboek of 1838 and the Código Civil Español, which will both be discussed further on in this chapter. More recent civil law projects have aimed or are as of yet aiming to correct this anomaly. Whether these efforts have in all respects been or will be successful is discussed in the eighth chapter of this book. Suffice it to say that the Code civil's inaccuracy which is here touched upon lies at the root of many legal intricacies which today's lawmakers are still struggling with.
7.3.4 Lesion beyond moiety (laesio enormis)
Besides the remedies for latent defects based on the ius commune-interpretation of the aedilician edict, in France prior to the Code civil parties to a sale could claim rescission of the contract or have the other party compensate the disproportionality of price, if they had not even received half the thing's just price.153 Though this remedy had not known a similar broad application in France as in the German regions, the discussion about its adoption in the Code civil is nevertheless revealing. It gives an insight into how 19th century scholars considered the relation between buyers and sellers and how they tried to express that relation in the day's legal terminology.
First of all, Thomasius' diatribe against the remedy for lesion beyond moiety had not passed unnoticed to the drafters of the Code civil. It was put on the table during one of the session about the future code in the Conseil d'État. Though Thomasius' attack had set the remedy for lesion beyond moiety as one of the key themes of the preliminary discussions about the sales chapter, his ideas were dismissed one by one in a lucid apology by Portalis.154
The gist of Portalis' argument was that justice existed independent of what parties to a contract agree on. For sales this follows from its commutative character; one gives something to receive back its equivalent.155 Consequently, the price, in order to be the given thing's equivalent, needs to answer to the given thing's worth. If not, contractual
677: '... ce délai, qui, dans l'ancien droit, s'étendait souvent à trente années...'.
153 Pothier, Vente, vol. 1, 5.2.2, no. 374, p. 367
154 Portalis, Discours, p. 395: 'Le citoyen Defermont soutient qu'entre majeurs la fraude, la violence, le dol,
sont les seules causes qui doivent amener la résolution des contrats. La rescision en matière de de vente d'immeubles, ainsi que le traitait lignager, avait pour but, avant la révolution, le maintien des biens dans les familles et dans le mains des seigneurs. Ce système est aujourd'hui changé, on doit écarter la rescision pour cause de lésion entre majeurs'; p. 406: 'Berlier, s'appuyant sur l'autorité du docteur Thomasius, établit que la loi 2, c. de rescind. vend. \[C. 4.44.2\] est apocryphe, qu'elle vient de Dioclétien, et que ses successeurs jusqu'à Justinien ne l'avaient pas appliquée; il expose les dangers de laisser les contrats imparfaits, ous soumis à des annullations postérieurs à leur acceptation, entre majeurs, puis la difficulté de fixer quel est le juste prix, et celle de déterminer la quotité de la lésion, et conclut au rejet un système que le projet de la section tend à faire revivre après l'abolition de l'article 3...'; Gönner, 'Über die Rescission', p. 363.
155 Portalis, Discours, p. 395: 'Ils on été posés dans cette séance même, le contrat de vente a été mis au rang des contrats commutatifs, et dans cette idée on a cherché à le ramener à sa nature, en corrigeant toutes les inégalités qui pouvaient mettre quelque différence à l'avantage du vendeur ou de l'acheteur'.
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