"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -H. G. Wells, The Outline of History
In the Beginning There Was Commercial Chaos
There have always been those who would sell you an ox cart made from rotting wood with wheels shaped like footballs. Warranty law is by no means a new thing, but it has been slow in developing.
AD 1250: St. Thomas Aquinas Weighs In
In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas (Saint Thomas) wrote an extraordinarily lucid set of definitions that neatly divided defective goods into three types:
1. A seller did not need to mention a manifest flaw to the buyer. Although the seller would exhibit the more exuberant virtue by disclosure, Aquinas agreed with the ancient adage "A buyer’s eye is his merchant where the defect is obvious." |
