Delictual Liability
A slave-owner or paterfamilias might also be made liable for the wrongdoing of a dependant. In addition, there were limited circumstances in which a person might be held liable for losses caused by another person.
(1) Noxal Surrender
Where a dependant committed a delict, the master had a choice. He could either pay off the victim of this wrongdoing, or he could surrender the offending dependant to the victim.[786] This is known as noxal surrender. The offender would then pass into the victim's power, and could be made to work off the damage.[787]
A curiosity about noxal liability and noxal surrender is that it attached to the dependant, not to the master, even though it was the master who was liable either to compensate or to make noxal surrender.[788] Suppose, for example, that my slave stole from you. I then sold the slave to a third party. You would have to bring the noxal action against the new owner, not against me.[789] If the slave was subsequently emancipated, the master's noxal liability would be extinguished, and the slave would be personally liable for the wrongdoing.
In classical Roman law, noxal liability could attach either to a slave or to a filiusfamilias. By Justinian's time, however, it was limited to slaves. A paterfamilias could no longer noxally surrender his children.[790]
Not having slaves, and no longer thinking noxal surrender of our children appropriate, this concept has of course no place in modern law. It is possible, however, that noxal surrender may make an unexpected return. It has been sugÂgested that, if and when artificial intelligence develops to the point that autonoÂmous devices can be held morally responsible for their actions, noxal surrender of a robot may be an appropriate response to its wrongdoing.[791]
(2) Quasi-Delictual Liability
Generally speaking, nobody was liable in Roman law for the delicts of any other person, except for the case of noxal liability. Unlike in modern law, there was no general principle of vicarious liability.[792] However, special provision was made for a limited number of cases, where a person was made liable as being in control of particular types of place in or from which loss or damage occurred. These special cases were classed as ‘quasi-delictual’, and are considered in Chapter 26.