Page 446 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS
has known: early modern scholasticism, legal humanism, Roman-Dutch and Roman- Frisian law, 17th and 18th century natural law. To contextualize the developments in this period, medieval ius commune and the codification movement at the end of the 18th century have also been explored. It is investigated what changes occurred and also why these changes in the interpretation of the legal position of a recipient of a defective thing took place. By so doing, this study found a missing link in legal historical literature. In addition, it provides the reader with information about the origins of the law governing defects in things exchanged for money as found in today's codes of civil law.
Throughout this book a fairly simple factual situation has been used as a connecting thread and backdrop against which developments were pinpointed, illustrated and evaluated.
A agrees to deliver a thing to B. B agrees to give A a certain sum of money in exchange for receiving the thing in his possession. The thing appears to be defective and therefore does not correspond to what A and B had agreed on.
The corresponding question which the scholars and practitioners central to this study posed was:
What legal recourse is open to B now that the thing he received turns out to be defective?
The study consequently investigated which answers early modern scholars and practitioners who worked with the ius commune of their time offered regarding B's legal position. To enable a more precise study of how these answers were conceived, five controversial issues were selected which throughout the history of Western European civil tradition had continuously surfaced in the legal debate about B's legal quandary. These issues also served as connecting threads in and between the various periods and currents of legal thought which are covered by this study.
The present section contains concluding remarks based on the results of the investigation and it provides an overview of which shifts were made in answering the controversial issues through time and among the various currents of legal thought which emerged in the early modern period. These findings have been brought together in a summary of how B's legal options evolved in the event he had received a defective object in his possession in exchange for a sum of money. Let us first restate briefly the legal controversies which were dealt with in this study.
9.2.1 Research topics2
(1) Justinian's Corpus iuris civilis has various remedies for defects in things received in exchange for a sum of money. These notably concern defects in a thing sold or leased. Some of them - the remedies formulated in the Aedilician Edict and the remedies available under the action on the sales contract - are almost identical. They all grant the buyer the
2
For a more detailed description see 1.2.2.
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