Page 91 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

EARLY MODERN CASTILIAN LAW
As one can read, restitution is expressed in very general terms. According to Decock it encompassed so many legal relationships that, 'it almost made the Roman categories of actions and remedies superfluous'.55 Furthermore, it does not matter how restitution is made. This could be either by returning a thing, by indemnification in money or by performing a service. For our topic, restitution meant that the seller of a defective thing could return the price paid, take back the thing, grant a reduction of price or repair the defective thing.56
Aquinas' views of commutative justice were incorporated in Castilian theological and legal doctrine. The theologian and jurist Molina explicitly states that a breach of equality is considered a sin for which one is liable in the forum internum.
'First, Divine Thomas' reasoning that sales and other similar contracts have been introduced for the common good can be confirmed, as Aristotle writes in his first book of the Republic, in so far as the one needs something of the other and vice versa. Yet, what has been introduced for the common good should not be more detrimental to the one than to the other. That would evidently be contrary to natural law which prescribes that you should not do to another what you reasonably would not want to happen to yourself. Moreover, there would be more damage for the one than for the other, if the equality between the thing and the price, or between whatever other things which are traded, is not preserved, because this would certainly be against commutative justice, the characteristic of which is to constitute equality in trading. Hence that every transgression of the latitude of the just price is a sin against commutative justice to such an extent that what has been overreached should be returned'.57
The need of equality between the value of the thing sold and the price paid would later become a focal point in Grotius' theory of contracts, be it in a modified sense. With the Dutch scholar the 'will to society (appetitus societatis)' takes the place of Aquinas' and
autem rerum adaequatio fieri non posset nisi ei qui minus habet quam quod suum est, suppleretur quod
deest'; Decock, Theologians, p. 517.
55 Decock, Theologians, p. 514.
56 Kutschker (1810-1881), archbishop of Vienna, describes the duty to make restitution as an unspecified
one. Kutschker, Schadenersatz, p. 41: 'Die ethische Restitutionspflicht hingegen ist eine affirmative... eben deshalb ist sie auch eine unbestimmte Pflicht, ein sogenanntes officium imperfectum, minus determinatum tum quoad obligationem, tum quoad modum obligationis \[Kutschker's emphasis\]'.
57 Molina, Opera omnia, vol. 2, disp. 350, no. 5, p. 235: 'Potest autem probari primo ratione D. Tho. Quoniam emptio et venditio, caeterique contractus similes, pro communi utilitate sunt introducti, ut Arist. I, pol. est autor quatenus videlicet unus indiget alterius et e contrario: quod autem pro communi utilitate est introductum, esse non debet in gravamen unius potius, quam alterius, iure naturali id efflagitante, quod praescribit, ut quod tibi rationabiliter non vis fieri, alteram \[non\] facias: esset autem in gravamen unius potius, quam alterius, nisi aequalitas servaretur inter rem et pretium, aut inter quascunque res alias quae commutarentur, quod utique contra iustitiam esset commutativam, cuius est constituere aequalitatem in commutionibus: quo sit, ut egressus quicunque a latitudine tota justi pretii sit peccatum contra iustitiam commutativam atque adeo ut quod ita defraudatem est, restitutioni sit obnoxium'; Mercado, Suma, lib. I, cap. II, fo. 10: 'De todo esto se infiere que el tratar con justicia es hacer igualdad y equidad en los contratos, a lo cual nos obliga la ley natural, salida de nuestra razón, que dicta que a nadie agraviemos, cuya observancia obliga a todos los mortales, sin exceptuar alguno... De arte que la justicia en todos los contratos es la igualdad que en ellos se ha de hacer, a lo cual – como extensamente probamos – nos obliga no sólo la ley divina, sino también la misma natural'.
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