Other Delicts
lang=EN-US style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:115%'>There were other delicts, such as cutting and stealing trees (actio arborum furtim caesarum, D.
47.7) or desecrating graves (actio de sepulchro violato, D. 47.12). Of these, rapina or actio vi bonorum raptorum (robbery) was the most important. It was the combination offurtum with force and was punished with a fourfold fine if sued within a year (after that, for the simple value). One-quarter of the fine was meant to compensate the victim.Alongside the delicts where intention (or negligence) was required, there were delicts where intention was not necessary. If something was thrown or poured out of a building, regardless of who did it the occupier had to pay double damages, including medical costs for free people, or 50 aurei if a free man was killed (actio de deiectis vel effusis).11° If something was placed on an eave or projecting roof in a place where people usually passed by, an action on the case was given for 10 solidi against the person who placed it, if it could injure people if it fell (actio de positis vel suspen- sis).111 If an employee of an inn-keeper, livery man, or shipmaster had stolen or damaged goods belonging to a customer, his master was liable, 112 according to Ulpian and Justinian, because he had been negligent in choosing such bad employees. There are several theories on the grounds for liability in these cases: negligence, risk liability, vicarious liability, or liability on account of public policy. The Byzantines classified them as quasi-delicts and added the liability of a judge for his errors (iudex qui litem suam fecit).
Notes
1. The bibliography on delicts and particularly the lex Aquilia is immense.
For surveys and literature the reader is referred to Kaser, Das römische Privatrecht, vol. 1, 146—165, 609—634; vol. 2, 425—440; Kaser and Knütel, Römisches Privatrecht, §§ 50—51; Zimmermann, Obligations, 902—1130.2. Authors such as Kaser consider the sum claimed in penal actions to be a fine, intended to placate the injustice done. Because under the lex Aquilia the sum claimed was the same as the loss suffered, Kaser is led to describe the action under the lex Aquilia as an action for a fine with a compensatory function. Compensation indeed redresses an injustice done, but the modern fine, of which Kaser is thinking, is not compensatory.
3. A. J. B. Sirks, ‘The delictual origin, penal nature and reipersecutory object of the actio damni iniuriae legis Aquiliae', TR 77 (2009): 303—353.
4. FIRA I, 13 no. 16.
lang=EN-US style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:109%'>5. FIRA I, 17 no. 6.
6. FIRA I, 13 no. 17.
7. See the chapter by Metzger, 287—9.
8. D. 47.2.12.1; but if the owner had no such interest, he could not sue: Inst. 4.1.13 (15).
9. Plautus, Rudens 473-478.
10. Gaius 3.189-190.
11. A.J.B.
Sirks, ‘Furtum and manus / potestas', TR 81 (2013): 465-506.12. D. 47.17.1.
13. P. Birks, ‘A Note on the Development of Furtum', Irish Jurist 8 (1973): 349—355.
14. D. 13.1.20.
15. D. 47.2.21.1.
16. D. 47.2.47 pr.
17. D. 47.2.50 pr.
18. D. 47.2.22.2.
19. D. 47.2.21 pr.
20. D. 47.2.52.7.
name=bookmark1356>21. D. 13.1.18, D. 47.2.43 pr.
22. D.
47.2.43.4.23. D. 47.2.40.
24. D.47.2.15.1.
25. D. 19.2.6; D. 47.2.14.2 and 12.
26. D. 47.2.21.8.
27. D. 47.2.21.7; the reference to the criminal charge relates to the lex Julia de vi privata.
28. D. 47.2.34.
29. D. 47.2.36 pr.; it still constituted wrongful loss: Inst. 4.3.16.
30. D. 47.2.36.3.
31. D. 47.2.52.22.
32. D. 47.2.37; it is generally assumed that the part ‘if someone... it' is a later addition, because it does not make the chasing person a thief.
33. J.A.
C. Thomas, ‘Contrectatio, Complicity and Furtum', Iura 13 (1962): 69—88.34. Gaius 3.199: ‘Sometimes theft may be committed of free persons, as, for example, if a person has carried off one of our children in our power, or our wife under marital power, or my adjudicated debtor'.
35. W.A.J. Watson, ‘Contrectatio as an Essential of Furtum', Law Quarterly Review 77 (1961): 526lang=EN-US style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>-532.
36. B. Nicholas, ‘Theophilus and Contrectatio', in Studies in Justinian’s Institutes, ed. P. Stein and A. D.E. Lewis (London, 1983), 118-124.
37. B. Albanese, ‘La nozione del ‘furtum' nell'elaborazione dei giuristi romani,' Jus 5 (1958): 315-326 (also in Albanese, Scritti Giuridici (Palermo, 1991), vol. 1,99-110).
38. Birks (n. 13).
39. Thomas (n. 33).
40. Watson (n. 35).
41. Birks (n. 13); H. F. Jolowicz, Digest XLVII, 2, De Furtis (Cambridge, 1940).
42. D. 47.2.1.3.
43. D.
47.2.57(56).1.44. D. 47.10.1 pr.
45. D. 9.2.13 pr.
46. D. 47.10.1.2.
47. D. 47.10.3.2-3.
48. D. 9.2.5.3-4.
49. D. 47.10.12.
style='margin-left:0cm;text-indent:18.0pt'>50. D. 47.10.13.7.51. D. 47.10.44.
52. D. 47.10.15.26.
53. Plut. Pomp. 48.
54. Plin. Ep. 7.24
55. D. 47.10.15.22.
56. D. 47.10.15.27.
57. D. 47.10.39.
58. D. 47.10.15.32.
59. D. 47.10.15.38.
60. F. Pringsheim, The Origin of the ‘lex Aquilia', in Melanges Levy-Bruhl, Paris 1959, 233—244 (= Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Heidelberg, 1961), vol. 2, 410—420).
61. Iniuria, a noun, has here an adjectival role, defining the nature of the loss. Damnum means ‘loss', not damage. See D. Daube, ‘On the Use of the Term Damnum', in Studi Solazzi, (Napoli 1948), 93-156.
62. G. Cardascia, ‘La portee primitive de la loi Aquilia', in Daube Noster: Essays in Legal History for David Daube, ed. A. Watson (Edinburgh, 1974), 53—75.
63. D. Nörr, ‘Zur Formel der actio legis Aquiliae', in Festschrift für Rolf Knütel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. H. Altmeppen et al. (Heidelberg, 2009), 833—48.
64. A. F. Rodger, ‘The Palingenesia of the Commentaries Relating to the Lex Aquilia', ZSS 124 (2007): 145—197.
65. D. 9.2.33.1; Inst. 4.3.16.
66. D. 9.2.13pr. The text has liber homo, which is interpreted by Kunkel as liber homo bona fide serviens, while others consider this a Byzantine interpolation (see Zimmermann (n. 1), 1016—1017). Yet neither argument makes sense given that a free man could sue for compensation for wounding in the case of pauperies and the delict de deiectis vel effusis, and D. 9.2.11.8 makes sense only if a free man could already sue utiliter for being wounded.
67. D. 9.2.7 pr.
68. D. 9.2.7.6.
69. D. 9.2.21.1.
70. D. 9.2.15.1.
71. D. 9.2.11.3. See A.J.B. Sirks, ‘The Slave Who Was Slain Twice: Causality and the lex Aquilia (lul. 38 dig. D. 9, 2, 51)', TR 79 (2011): 313—351.
72. D. 9.2.9.2.
73. D. 9.2.11.1.
74. D. 9.27.5.
75. Inst. 4.3.16.
76. D. 9.2.11 pr.
77. D. 9.2.7.3.
78. D. 9.2.9.4.
style='font-size:9.0pt; line-height:107%'>79. D. 9.2.30 pr.
80. D. 9.2.4 pr.
81. D. 9.2.5 pr.
82. Cic. Top. 64.
83. Cic. Top. 64; see 263.
84. D. 9.2.31.
85. D. 9.2.44 pr.
86. D. 9.2.30.3.
87. D. 9.2.30.4.
88. Without this condition, determinism would be the outcome: it would not matter whether one took care of a wound or not. Now it depended on free will.
89. D. 9.2.11.2; 9.2.19.
90. D. 9.2.33 pr.
91. D. 9.2.7 pr.
92. D. 9.2.33 pr.
93. D. 9.2.23 pr.
94. D. 9.2.21.2.
95. D. 9.2.41.1, 40; as in the case offurtum, see 249, D. 47.2.47 pr.
96. D. 9.2.17-19.
97. D. 9.2.23.11-24, 25.
98. D. 9.2.25.2.
99. D. 9.4.4 pr.
100. A.J.B. Sirks, ‘Noxa caput sequitur', TR 81 (2013) 81-108.
101. D. 47.10.17.4.
102. D. 9.1.1.4.
103. D. 9.2.11.5.
104. D. 9.1.1.13.
105. D. 9.1.1 pr.
106. D. 9.1.1 pr.
107. D. 9.2.37.1.
108. D. 21.1.40-42.
109. D. 9.1.3. Cf. the actio de deiectis vel effusis (Section 7, 268).
110. D. 9.3.1.
111. D. 9.3.5.6-13.
112."Times New Roman"'> D. 4.9, D. 47.5.