French Civil Code, 1804
After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the “Napoleonic Code.” The civil code gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights.
In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system. He established a special commission, led by J.J. Cambaceres, which met more than 80 times to discuss the revolutionary legal revisions, and Napoleon presided over nearly half of these sessions. In March 1804, the Napoleonic Code was finally approved.
It codified several branches of law, including commercial and criminal law, and divided civil law into categories of property and family.
Article 1625. The warranty due from the vendor to the purchaser embraces two points: the first is the peaceable possession of the thing sold; the second, the secret defects of the article, or such as would annul the sale.
Article 1641. The seller is bound to warranty in respect of secret defects in the thing sold which render it improper for the use to which it is destined, or which so far diminish such use, that the buyer would not have purchased it, or would not have given so large a price, if he had known them.
Article 1643. [The seller] is bound against concealed faults, even though he was not aware of them, unless in such case it have been stipulated that he should not be bound to any warranty.