TIME OF ESTIMATE
Like modern financial portfolios, peculia may fluctuate widely and quickly. In case of litigation on the peculium, it is vital for the plaintiff(s) to establish when the peculium must be taken into consideration, because the time is instrumental in defining the level of the master’s liability.
Whether the peculium incurs major losses after the estimate is irrelevant, because the master’s other assets - outside the peculium - can be called upon for compensation. Theoretically, various moments can be envisaged:• the initial establishment of the peculium (= concessio peculii), or any time the peculium has been re-evaluated or recapitalised, assuming that the master has then a precise and accurate knowledge of its content;
• the time of the transaction, assuming that the contracting party would check the state of the peculium standing as a kind of surety;
• the time when the plaintiff introduces his claim in iure, thus starting litigation;
• the time when the joinder of issue (litis contestatio) is pronounced, before sending the case to a judge (apud iudicem);
• the time when the judge makes his decision (iudicium);
• outside of the proceedings, whenever the peculium is cancelled because of the slave’s death, manumission or conveyance, or at any given moment within one year of the event, while the actio de peculio is still available.
Classical jurists are rather discreet about this fundamental issue, and occasionally make ambiguous and somewhat contradictory statements. Following Proculus and Pegasus, Ulpian considers that a peculium may be empty at the start of litigation, but rebuilt later on by the time of the judicial decision, thus making the actio de peculio valid.[586] Along the same lines, if the peculium is insufficient to repay a debt at the time of judgment, complementary proceedings can start anew for the balance if the state of the peculium subsequently improves.[587] Whoever makes a contract with a slave is bound to pay attention to changes in the value of the peculium, which does not preclude a certain amount of speculation.[588] Paul denies any guarantee (cautio) bearing on a possible, though hypothetical, increase of the peculium, no matter how insufficient it was at the time of judgment.[589] [590] In some - admittedly far-fetched - cases, the estimate must take place at a given moment, for instance when the principal becomes the heir of a creditor of the peculium[591] or is kidnapped:[592] an estimate is made at the very moment when the principal’s status is altered. The same opportunity occurs when the slave dies during litigation on his peculium, or when the late principal’s estate includes a legacy of the peculium, either to the slave to be manumitted by will or to an outsider.[593] Because any peculium is potentially volatile, depending on its components and its management, it is difficult for would-be contracting parties to foresee future developments in the value of the peculium. 7.
More on the topic TIME OF ESTIMATE:
- Time and place of performance
- 4.4 The time in Tübingen: research and teaching
- Time investment and workload
- Reading the case for the first time
- Hume’s Position Considered for the First Time
- Hume’s Position Considered for the Second Time
- Hume’s Position Considered for the Fifth Time
- Hume’s Position Considered for the Third Time
- Hume’s Position Considered for the Fourth Time
- Hume’s Position Considered for the Final Time
- INTERNATIONAL LEGAL CONTEXT-MAKING: DOING THINGS WITH TIME
- Some modern legal systems recognize a further, practically very dangerous, threat to the life of obligations: the lapse of time.
- CHAPTER XXVIII. EFFECT ON QUESTIONS OF STATUS, OF LAPSE OF TIME, DEATH, JUDICIAL DECISION.
- This chapter has as its subject what will, for simplicity, be called �the papyri’, though one or two inscriptions can profitably be considered at the same time.[147]
- The Babatha and the Salome Komaise archives contain a number of documents that may, indirectly, reveal something about the law of succession current at the time.
- Roman law at the time of the crisis: from Die Krise to Europa und das römische Recht
- As we saw, the man who really ‘‘invented” the state was Thomas Hobbes. From his time up to the present, one of its most important functions - as of all previous forms of political organization - had been to wage war against others of its kind.
- What moral ‘facts’ could lie behind the variety of moral notions — and what is often their bedrock, religious notions — which have manifested themselves in myriad institutions and norms of behaviour and which appear to be relative to time, place and circumstances?
- 1. Underestimates