The regime of the ius commune: all or nothing
Until the time of Justinian the general rule was all or nothing. Predominantly this meant "all": the plaintiff was able to claim the full value of what the defendant had received.
The alternative of "nothing" applied only in cases of interims speciei not attributable to the fault of the defendant. The condictio pretii constituted the only exception from this simple scheme: if the defendant, in good faith, sold the object that he had received, the purchase price took the place of that object as far as the plaintiffs condictio was concerned. Considerably less indulgence was thus afforded to the defendant by the Roman lawyers than by the BGB, and the lawyers of the ius commune by and large accepted this position for a long time.401 More particularly, the distinction between condictiones aimed at the recovery of a species or a quantitas remained firmly entrenched and in the latter case the debtor continued to be held liable, in conformity with D. 12, 6, 7, for tantundem: "Scd quando quantitas solvitur: tune indistincte dicitur quis locupletior in eo quod recipit. Quantitas enim perire non potest."4 2 Usually the parallel with mutuum was drawn, and Cuiacius and many subsequent FrenchW7 Ulp. D. 12. 6. 26. 12.
39K As Peter Birks (Mommsen. Kriiger. Watson. The Digest of Justinian, vol. I (1985')') translates.
t9" Flume, Festschrift Niedermeyer, p. 105.
Cf., in particular, Flume, Festschrift Niedermeyer, pp. 104 sqq.; cf. also: Niederla’nder, op. cit., note 253, pp. 4 sqq.; Make Diesselhorst, Die Natur der Sache ah aussergesetzliche Rechtsquelle, verfolgtan der Rechtsprechtmg zur Saidolheorie (1968), pp. 36 sqq. Contra: Heinrich Siber, "Retentio propter res donatas", in: Studi in onore di Salvatore Riccobono, vol. Ill (1936), pp. 252, 257; von Lubtow, Condictio, pp. 20 sqq. and others.
431 Flume, Festschrift Niedermeyer. pp. 140 sqq.
Bartolus, Commentaria, ad D. 12, 6, 7 (Quod indebitum). authors even referred to a quasi-contract of "promutuum" in these cases.[4591] Lauterbach, in the 17th century, summarized the then prevailing opinion in the following terms:
"Si quantitas indebiti soluta, tantundem in eodem gcnere [petiturj... Si vcro species soluta, rcpetitur ilia ipsa... Si vcro res in specie restitui non potest, bonae fidei possessor, qui nullam moram adnnsit, non tenetur, nisi in quantum locupletior factus est (i.e. the price that he has actually received]... Malae fidei vcro possessor, aut qui moram admisit, verum pretium restituit [i.e. the actual value of the object in question]."[4592]"4
6.
More on the topic The regime of the ius commune: all or nothing:
- 1. The older ius commune
- Requirements of mora debitoris (ius commune)
- Impossibilium nulla obligatio est under the (earlier) ius commune
- The compromissum of the ius commune
- III. FURTUM IN THE IUS COMMUNE
- Donation under the ius commune and in modern law
- THE ROMAN CONTRACT OF STIPULATION UNDER THE IUS COMMUNE
- Conventio, pactum and contractus under the ius commune
- Consequences ofmora debitoris (ius commune)
- JUSTINIAN, IUS COMMUNE AND MODERN DEVEEOPMENTS
- 7.7.3 The Ius Commune in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula and the Netherlands
- Post-classical developments, Corpus Juris and ius commune
- Just like the Roman contractual system, the whole range of condictiones supplementing it was received into the ius commune;
- "Solutio propria", "in praecisa forma et specie obligationis"[3885] (to use the terminology of the European ius commune) has always been, and still is, the most important way of terminating obligations.
- Praetor’s Edict, Ius Honorarium, and Ius Novum
- V. IUS jNATURALE, IUS GENTIUM
- The position under the ins commune
- The boni mores and the ins commune