Effectiveness and Flaws of Legal Transactions
Plan Effectiveness (Articles 121-137 CC)
The plan effectively addresses the legal transaction’s effect. Business may involve existing, valid, but ineffective legal situations. Studying plan effectiveness requires analyzing accidental elements.
Accidental Elements:
- Condition
- Term
- Charges
Concept: Legal business analysis involves existence, validity, and effectiveness. Efficacy is the means to produce the effects desired by the agent. When a business is existing, legal, and valid, with no accidental elements, effectiveness is automatic. However, if any accidental element exists, taking effect depends on its occurrence. These optional elements, once entered into the business by the parties’ will, influence the business’s effects.
1. Condition:
- Precedent or Initial
- Resolutive or Final
It is the accidental element that makes the beginning (initial condition) or end (final condition) of production from the effects of a business event, or indeed, future, is uncertain.
Condition Features:
- Willingness (stems from the traders’ will)
- Futurity (the fact must be in the future)
- Uncertainty (nobody knows for sure if that fact will occur)
- Physical possibility (for any ordinary person) and legal (according to the law).
When the legal business has no incidental items, it is called PURE.
Condition Precedent or Initial: (Article 125) A condition that makes the beginning of the entitlement or the production of the transaction’s effects subject to an uncertain future event. (E.g., I will give you a car if you pass the entrance exam / I will buy your horse if he wins the grand prize in Rio)
Condition Resolutive or Final: (Article 127) One that ends the right or the business’s effects upon an uncertain future event. (E.g., You will receive a pension while maintaining an average of eight in college / I will lend you this apartment until you get married.)
Flaws or Defects in Legal Business
Concept: Every act of human will, whether a strict act or a legal business, should be done freely and willingly. Situations like deception, threats, danger, or inexperience may typify defects or flaws that can annul the legal business. (Such defects or vices apply to legal acts in the strict sense where applicable).
1. Vices of Consent:
These typify situations in which the dealer, had they known the truth or not been coerced, would not have entered the legal business.
Substantial or Essential Error:
(Article 138; See Articles 1556, 1557, 1558, 1559 / Article 178; See 1560). In substantial error, the dealer or practitioner is mistaken about a factor crucial to the act. Error differs from intent because deception is spontaneous; the agent was mistaken alone. In intentional deception, it is caused or induced. The error that nullifies the legal business must be substantial, i.e., the determining factor for such action. The error can relate to the object, as per Article 139 of the CC, or the essential qualities of the person, pursuant to Articles 139, II, and 1557 CC.
Note: A mistake of law, a form of substantial error, is an error of law (the agent wants to enforce the law but was mistaken about its interpretation). It’s a novelty in CC/02. This error means a misinterpretation of the law by the agent who does not refuse to enforce the law; they only err in its interpretation. For example, if someone imports goods thinking the tax costs X, and upon receiving them, discovers it costs much more, they can cancel the deal within four years. We must not confuse the error of law with the LICC, which disallows claiming ignorance of the law as an excuse not to fulfill it.