Section 1. On Location

608. Obligations. Because the contract of location is similar to purchase-sale, for the right of using some thing or of receiving its fruits is bought and sold, those things which above were said concerning purchase-sale must also be applied to location. But in species these things must be noted:

1. The tenant is bound to repair damages which happen to the leased thing in these cases:

a. If he himself is their gravely culpable cause theologically;

b. If he himself by expressed agreement undertook upon himself any dangers whatsoever of the leased thing;

c. If by the sentence of the judge according to the laws in force he has been condemned to repair them.¹

2. Positive laws establish that in location of fields some part of the price of location be remitted when the field has in great part lacked fruits because of misfortune, for example, because of hail. The quantity of price to be remitted in this case is usually determined by law.²

Note. a. Since today in most parts of Europe tenants of fields, because of the sad conditions of agriculture, have fallen into a miserable lot, locators must be warned not to require too great a price of location, so that the tenant in ordinary circumstances can live honorably with his family from the fruit of his labor.

b. Yet as a norm which justice requires this cannot be admitted: that the tenant can take from the fruits of the fields those things which are required for the honorable support of himself and his family, and that the price of location is to be paid only from those things which remain over. For the price of location determined by just agreement must be paid, even if, because of accidental misfortune, the fruits of the fields are less. Nor is an agreement of this kind to be called unjust, that the same price be paid even if fewer fruits have grown, provided that a greater price is not required when the fruits grow more abundantly.³

¹ Cf. C.A. Section 1096 s.

² C.A. Section 1104 ss.

³ Cf. Genicot I, n. 644.