Rapina

The delict rapina (robbery) came to the fore when a person appropriated a move­able corporeal object belonging to another with the use of violence (vis).

Since, as a rule, a person who committed robbery was not caught in the act, the punishment for furtum manifestum would seldom have applied and thus the robber was liable in terms of the actio furti nec manifesti to pay twice the value of the object in question. Such penalty was apparently too light and with the increasing incidents of robbery in the closing years of the Republic the praetor introduced a special action, the actio vi bonorum raptorum, in terms of which the robber was liable for four times the value of the property that had been taken.^[937] If there was more than one robber, liability was cumulative and so each robber had to pay the full penalty. However, the law required that the actio vi bonorum raptorum was instituted within a year of the robbery. If this time limit was not met, the action lay only for the value of the stolen object. It should be noted, further, that this action could be instigated by the person who had been robbed (i.e. the person in charge of the object at the moment of the robbery) or by his heirs against the robber and his accomplices (but not against their heirs).^[938]

In the classical period the victim of robbery could institute, cumulatively with the actio vi bonorum raptorum, an actio reipersecutoria (usually the rei vindicatio or the condictio furtiva) for the recovery of the stolen property or its value. Under the law of Justinian the actio vi bonorum raptorum was deemed a mixed action (actio mixta), i.e. an action directed not only at the punishment of the wrongdoer but also at the recovery of the object taken or its value in one claim. In practice, this reduced the actual punishment to three times the value of the object and the actiones rei persecutoriae (i.e. the rei vindicatio or the condictio furtiva) were thus precluded.^[939]

4.10.3