Page 92 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CHAPTER THREE
the early modern scholastics' divine law.58 Acting in accordance with natural law with Grotius means that man's acts correspond to upholding human society.
3.2.2.1 The formulation of general rules
As could already be glimpsed from the general character of restitution, early modern scholastic theory possessed the tendency to reason deductively from general rules. It did not approach moral topics inductively, as medieval legal theory had done in its dealings with legal issues.59 Many learned treatises which saw the light in early modern Castile took the shape of commentaries on Thomas of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, which contains general principles related to the sales of defective things. Castilian theologians such as Vitoria, Soto and Molina further elaborated on what they encountered in Aquinas' work.
The Summa Theologiae posits the rule that only a knowing seller who does not inform the buyer of a defect acts fraudulently. Contrariwise, a seller who is not aware of the thing's bad quality, does not. According to Aquinas, a seller acquainted with the lacking species, quantitas or qualitas of what he sells,
'not only sins by concluding an unjust sale, but is also liable for restitution. However, if one of the above mentioned defects is in the thing sold, but he does not know it, the seller does not sin, because, though he does something which is in itself injust, no injust work has been done, as follows from q. 59, a. 2.60 Yet, he is liable to compensate the buyer for the damages, if the defect later comes to his knowledge'.61
A second general rule in Aquinas' Summa which would prove to be influential among early modern Castilian scholars is
'... that it is always illicit to occasion that someone else incurs damage or runs a risk... After all, there is damage, if because of the defect the thing about to be sold is of a lower price, but he \[sc. the seller\] does not reduce the price a bit, because of that defect'.62
58 Grotius, IBP, prolegomena, nos. 7-8, pp. 8-9: 'societatis custodia humano intellectui conveniens fons est eius iuris, quod proprie tali nomine appellatur...'.
59 As concerns civil law, early modern Spanish scholars also no longer treated the subject matter in the illogical sequence of the CIC, cf. Albornoz, Arte, lib. IV, conclusion, p. 175v: 'y todos los sumistas que escriven por orden de el a.b.c. la qual es mui reprovada, porque no puede haver en ella orden natural, y donde no hay orden no puede haver memoria, que es hija de la Orden..'..
60 Aquinas, Summa Theol., vol. 9, IIaIIae, q. 59, a. 2, resp., p. 22: 'Et ideo si aliquis faciat aliquid quod est iniustum non intendens iniustum facere, puta cum hoc facit per ignorantiam, non existimans se iniustum facere; tunc non facit iniustum per se et formaliter loquendo, sed solum per accidens, et quasi materialiter faciens id quod est iniustum'.
61 Aquinas, Summa Theol., vol. 9, IIaIIae, q. 77, a. 2, resp, p. 151: '...non solum aliquis peccat iniustam venditionem faciendo, sed etiam ad restitutionem tenetur. Si vero eo ignorante aliquis praedictorum defectuum in re vendita fuerit, venditor quidem non peccat, quia facit iniustum materialiter, non tamen eius operatio est iniusta, ut ex supradictis \[q. 59, a. 2\]: tenetur tamen, cum ad eius notitiam pervenerit, damnum recompensare emptori'.
62 Aquinas, Summa Theol., vol. 9, IIaIIae, q. 77, a. 3, resp., p. 152: 'dicendum quod dare alicui occasionem periculi vel damni semper est illicitum... damnum quidem si propter huiusmodi vitium res quae vendenda proponitur minoris sit pretii, ipse vero propter huiusmodi vitium nihil de pretio subtrahat': cf. Clavasio, Summa, p. 400; Soto, De iustitia, to Aquinas, Summa Theol., IIaIIae, vol. 9, q. 77, a. 1, p. 198: '... damnum quidem si res propter vitium minoris sit pretium quam venditur'.
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