Page 55 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

MEDIEVAL IUS COMMUNE
manner.84 Accursius' view is also adopted by Paulus de Castro.85
Yet, Accursius' interpretation of D. 19.1.21(22).1, the text in which an ignorant
seller who sold land encumbered with a provincial tax was only liable, if he had knowingly kept silent about it, did not change the text's literal content. Accursius argued that an ignorant seller of land liable for provincial taxes (tributum) was not obliged to compensate at all, because 'the buyer should have known about the provincial tax'.86
This last remark is criticised by De Revigny and Paulus de Castro. De Revigny dismisses Accursius' various solutions for the texts about capitatio and tributum. 'That cannot be a solution, because you should see that for the solving of the claim to payment there cannot be but one solution'.87 De Revigny contends that the text about capitatio differs from the one about tributum, since in the first the seller had guaranteed the height of the capitatio the owner of the land would be due.88 This given warranty triggers the seller's full liability, 'as if he was a knowing seller', so also De Castro.89 Though the letter of the law seems to indicate a price reduction, both De Revigny and De Castro interpret the texts as condemning the seller for a full liability, because of a given warranty.
Further evidence of the inclination to squeeze texts about encumbered land into the mould of movables' latent defects law is indeed present in the minds of these scholars is demonstrated by De Revigny's further comments on the second sentence of
84 Baldus, Commentaria, vol. 1, to C. 4.49.9, fo. 124v: 'Si venditor asserit...tenetur emptori ignoranti ad interesse...gl tractat hic de actione quanti minoris, de qua dic ut dixi supra de rescind. vend., l. ii \[C. 4.44.2\], quod tene menti'.
85 Quoted to D. 19.1.41, in: De la Porte, Corpus iuris civilis, p. 1500: 'Venditor qui certificat emptorem de commodo debet etiam certificare de onere quod imminet ratione illius commodi: alias tenetur ad interesse. Paulus de Castro. Per hanc legem fundat se in glo. in l. cum venderes, de contrahenda emptio. \[D. 18.1.59\] quod venditor tenetur tradere rem liberam a servitute'.
86 Gloss Quanto minoris to D. 19.1.13(14).1: 'emptor debuit scire praedium tributarium...', in: De la Porte, Corpus iuris civilis, p. 1484; Dilcher, Leistungsstörungen, p. 219; Hallebeek, 'The Ignorant Seller's Liability', p. 197; similarly De Belleperche († 1308), Quaestiones, q. 54, fo. 15v.
87 De Revigny, Lectura super codice, to C. 4.49.9, fo. 203v: 'Sed non potest esse solutio. Unde videatis quod pro ista proprietate solvenda non potest esse nisi una solutio'; for the translation of proprietas as 'claim to payment' see Niermeyer, Lexicon, sub voce 'proprietas', no. 5; Ducange describes the verb proprietare as 'Rem alicui propriam facere, assere, in proporium dare (To make another's thing one's own, to lay claim to it, to add it to one's own property)'. Ducange, Glossarium, sub voce 'proprietare'.
88 De Revigny, Lectura super codice, to C. 4.49.9, fo. 203v: 'Hic autem loquitur ubi affirmavit quantum deberetur nomine tributi unde tenetur sive sciens, sive ignorans'.
89 De Castro, Commentaria, vol. 2, to D. 19.1.13(14)pr, no. 5, fo.121: 'sicut si fuisset sciens'; idem, Commentaria, vol. 7, to C. 4.49.9, fo. 232v: 'Venditor qui asseveravit minus esse onus fiscale quam esse...'.
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