[1679] Mor 7208
Subject_1 IRRITANCY.
Subject_2 SECT. V. Pactum legis commissoriæ in pignoribus.
Date: Beatson
v.
Harrower
17 January 1679
Case No.No 44.
In a sale for a competent price, where the purchaser has no power to require his money, redemption is only competent within the time and in terms of the reversion.
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There was a disposition of some tenements and roods in the Link-town of Kirkcaldy, granted by George Beans to one Kennedy, bearing the lands redeemable within five years, for payment of 700 merks, being Beans's own proper money, acquired by him, and not borrowed. Beatson now having right, pursues declarator of the land as his irredeemably, not having been redeemed within the time of the reversion. The defender alleged, That this being a wadset right, though it bears only a temporary reversion, yet that it is pactum legis commissoriæ in pignoribus, which the civil law rejecteth, and our law alloweth to be purgeable at any time before declarator, by consigning the sums in the reversion; as being exceedingly penal, procured from indigent debtors in their distress, and which therefore the Lords, ex nobili officio, modified to the true interest, as they do in all other penalties in bonds, though excluding all modifications. It was answered, that a reversion may be where there is no pignus, but a true vendition for a competent price; and then there is nothing penal, but favourable, which appears to be in this case, where there is no requisition, and therefore neither creditum nor pignus, and where the reversion is only competent upon the proper means and money of the disponer, without borrowing.
The Lords found, that if there were no requisition, but a sale for a competent price, the lands are not redeemable but within the time, and on the terms in the reversion.
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