Page 396 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CODES OF CIVIL LAW
limitation periods of the remedies to enforce safeguarding duties had already lapsed.311 However, this reasoning apparently did not count for the remedies for eviction and encumbrances, as the BGB nonetheless assigns to these the long 30-year period of limitation.312 Hence, under the BGB, a buyer of an encumbered immovable had 30 years to institute a claim, whereas one who had been delivered a movable suffering from a defect, despite a warranty to the contrary, could only bring a remedy within six months or one
year, unless he could prove the seller's fraudulent concealment.313
Compared to the other Germanic codes discussed in this chapter, the BGB does not
seem to have opted for the most satisfactory system for the law concerning latent defects. The ALR had brought the remedies for eviction and encumbrances under the same header as those for latent defects.314 This solution seems more coherent. It meant that a buyer who suffered loss because of encumbrances in 19th century Prussia had to bring a remedy within the same period of time as one who suffered loss because of a breach of warranty, when a burden on the object which, despite a warranty to the contrary, proved to be present. Both buyers had to bring a remedy within one or three years, depending on whether the thing transferred was a movable or immovable. In addition, if the seller's fraud could be proven, the buyer could sue for damages within 30 years.315 The ABGB even more thoroughly keeps to the wish of short limitation periods. Unlike the ALR and BGB, it also applies a short limitation period to the remedy for fraudulent intent. The seller's fraud only has consequences for the scope of his liability, not for the period within which the buyer has to institute a claim.316
7.7.4 Lesion beyond moiety (laesio enormis)
'Das BGB hat, ebenso wie bereits das bisherige HGB, die Anfechtung wegen
Verletzung über die Hälfte beseitigt'317
As this quote from Dernburg's Pandekten illustrates, the legal atmosphere around 1900 was not in favour of offering a broad remedy to rescind a contract because of lesion beyond moiety to either one of the contracting parties. The precursor of pandecticism, Savigny, already roundly rejected that someone who erred regarding a thing's price should be legally protected, since serious neglect could be imputed to such a person.318 Furthermore, a contract concluded in error is not in itself null, nor can it be annulled by
311 Mugdan, Materialien, vol. 2, § 397, p. 133; Entwurf, § 397 BGB, p. 238.
312 § 195 BGB. The period starts with the coming into being of the possibility to bring a remedy § 198 BGB.
313 Maximilian, Anwendungsbereich, p. 74, with literature.
314 See 7.2.2.1.
315 Leske, Vergleichende Darstellung, vol. 1, § 60, p. 198, note 3.
316 See 7.4.3.
317 Dernburgh, Pandekten, vol. 2, § 102, p. 284.
318 Savigny, System, vol. 3, Beylage 8, p. 340: 'Wer z. B. eine Sache zu theuer bezahlt oder zu wohlfeil
verkauft, weil er über ihren wahren Wert im Irrthum ist, wird gegen diesen Nachtheil nicht geschützt'; idem, Beylage 8, p. 341: '... daß in den Fällen, die an sich für die Wirksamkeit des Irrthums wohl geeignet sind, diese Wirksamkeit dennoch wegfällt, sobald dem Irrthum eine große Nachlässigkeit zum Grunde liegt'; idem, Beylage 8, p. 345: 'Aber gerade über diesen wichtigen und häufigen Fall sind so ziemlich Alle einig, daß der Irrthum keine Hülfe gewähre'.
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