The assessment clauses and litiscrescence

One of the peculiar features of the Roman lex Aquilia that never appears to have been received in Europe was the retrospective (or prospective) assessment of the value of the object killed or damaged, as required by the "quanti in eo anno plurimi fuit" and "quanti ea res er it in diebus triginta proximis" clauses of chapters one and three respectively.¹²⁹ While legal writers tried to puzzle out the reasons for these strange provisions,¹³⁰ the courts simply assessed the plaintiffs interest "secundum statum praesentem in quo (res) fuit tempore damni dati".¹³¹ Johann Sichard and Johannes Brunnemann still opposed this deviation from the Roman sources,^[5301] but a mere generation later it was more or less universally accepted.

The rule of lis infitiando crescit in duplum^[5303] proved somewhat more long-lived. Although it was tied up with certain niceties of Roman civil procedure, it had still become part of the ius commune as a convenient means of preventing parties to a lawsuit from lying:.. jus civile in judicia hoc casu reducendum est, quo coercerentur eo melius publica ilia injudicio prolata mendacia", as the matter was put by Stryk.^[5304] But by his time the tide had turned in practice^[5305] and Stryk himself acknowledged that "usu fori hoc duplum cessare plerique censent". In the course of the 18th century, this opinion came to prevail in legal literature, too.¹³⁷

3.