Page 434 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER EIGHT
8.6.1 The ABGB in comparison
A significant difference with the NBW and the modified BGB is that the ABGB keeps the distinction between non-performance and Gewährleistung intact. Yet, this choice is certainly no less advantageous than the choice made in the Netherlands and Germany to put non-performance and safeguarding duties on a par. As observed above, at present, Dutch law does not provide handles to the buyer as to which periods of limitation have to be applied to remedies based on the facts of non-conformity. German civil law, in keeping with ius commune, regards eviction as a species of non-performance for which a 30-years limitation holds, instead of the five-year limitation of remedies for non-conformity due to encumbrances on edifices or the two-year limitation of remedies for non-conformity in other things. As a result, a buyer confronted with a non-conforming edifice has 25 years less time to act than the buyer of an immovable of another kind which appears to be subject to a third-party claim.142
The ABGB in its present fashion escapes such intricacies by assigning an equal limitation to all remedies for Gewährleistung, including remedies for third-party claims and defects in the sold item. The only thing parties have to take into account is that the period of the remedy for eviction does not begin with the delivery of the object, but at the moment at which the buyer has become acquainted with the third-party claim.143 The underlying reason for determining such a short period of limitation for defects was that the defect should be present at the time of delivery. A long limitation period would make it increasingly difficult to prove that such had been the case. However, in case of third-party claims this is different. Since such claims depend on a third-party's wish to exercise his right, the buyer cannot make use of a remedy for Gewährleistung against the seller, as long as the third party does not bring a claim. In keeping with the adage contra non valentem agere, nulla currit praescriptio, the beginning of limitation is in such cases postponed.144
Furthermore, the ABGB grants the recipient the option to sue for damages which might result from the seller's fault or fraud.145 This remedy lies irrespective of how the promisor acted on the claims to cure his breach of safeguarding duty and has its own requirements. The promisor's liability depends on and is measured by his fault or fraud.146
142 § 438 BGB 2002.
143 More precisely, the period begins to count from the moment a serious effort to discover the third-party
claim (ernsthafte Prüfung) would have yielded effect. See OGH 14 May 1992, 6Ob531/91; OGH 21 April
2005, 6Ob353/04m.
144 Zeiller, Kommentar, 3.1, p. 140
145 § 1295 (1) ABGB, §§ 1323-1324 ABGB.
146 Gschnitzer, in: Klang, Kommentar, vol. 6, to § 923 ABGB, p. 545: 'Der neue Text: 'In allen Fällen haftet
der Übergeber für den verschuldeten Schaden', soll klarstellen, ' daß neben dem Gewährleistungsanspruch der Anspruch auf Schadenersatz nur besteht, wenn der Schaden vom Übergeber verschuldet ist'. Der Wiedergegebene Schlußsatz des ersten Absatzes des § 932 will also dem Erwerber nicht einen Schadenersatzanspruch gewähren, sonder nur einen bereits aus der allgemeine Regel des § 1295 sich ergebenden und and die allgemeinen Voraussetzungen einer Schadenersatzpflicht gebunendenen Schadenersatzanspruch - neben den Gewährleistungsansprüchen - vorbehalten'; Barta, Grundriss, pp. 599-600.
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