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Justinian I · The Digest of Justinian §5.1.10.pr

Definition of Abandonment of a Suit and Good-Faith Withdrawal

Passage 891 of 9271 · Latin

Summary

Ulpian defines the "abandonment" (desistere) of a lawsuit, clarifying that it differs from mere deferral, and explains that a person who withdraws from an unjust suit without calumnious intent upon learning the truth is not legally considered to have abandoned it.

[IDEM libro decimo ad edictum. ] §5.1.10.prDestitisse is uidetur non qui distulit, sed qui liti renuntiauit in totum: desistere enim est de negotio abstinere, quod calumniandi animo instituerat.
[THE SAME in the tenth book on the Edict.] A person is deemed to have abandoned an action not who has deferred it, but who has renounced the lawsuit altogether; for to abandon is to withdraw from a legal proceeding which one had instituted with a calumnious intent.
plane si quis cognita rei ueritate suum negotium deseruerit nolens in lite improba perseuerare, quam calumniae causa non instituerat, is destitisse non uidetur.
Clearly, if anyone, upon learning the truth of the matter, has deserted his own proceeding, being unwilling to persist in an unjust lawsuit which he had not instituted for the purpose of calumny, he is not deemed to have abandoned it.

Notes

  1. 5.1.10.prDestitisse is uidetur non qui distulit, sed qui liti renuntiauit in totum — The subject is of the main clause is modified by the relative clauses non qui..., sed qui... . The verb uidetur is constructed with the infinitive destitisse to mean 'is deemed to have abandoned'. liti is a dative object governed by renuntiauit.
  2. 5.1.10.prcognita rei ueritate — An ablative absolute construction consisting of the noun ueritate and the perfect participle cognita. rei is a genitive modifying ueritate. It expresses time or cause: 'when the truth of the matter was learned'.
  3. 5.1.10.prnolens in lite improba perseuerare, quam calumniae causa non instituerat — The present participle nolens agrees with the subject of the conditional clause (quis). The relative pronoun quam (feminine singular) has lite as its antecedent. calumniae causa is a genitive + causa construction expressing purpose: 'for the purpose of calumny'.

Cite this passage

Justinian I, The Digest of Justinian §5.1.10.pr. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi2806.phi002.humanitext-lat1:5.1.10.pr

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