Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Contracts

If there was no other agreement in place, each partner took an equal share in profits and losses, but the only absolute rule was that no one could be entirely excluded from the profits. The basic legal consequence of the partnership was as follows: if one partner carried out a transaction on behalf of the partnership, the others were liable to him for their shares of the costs (up to the limits of their participation), or, conversely, he was obliged to pay them their shares of the profits. In practice, it is likely that much of this accounting was done on paper, and money changed hands only periodically and/or at the dissolution of the partnership. The method would have been essentially the same as the accounting used, say, by roommates who pay bills and buy food for the household as needed out of their individ ual pockets, but then periodically equalize their contributions. Note that, as was the case with the contract of hire, rights exist only between persons who have their own contract. A person who sold something “to the partnership” was really selling to the individual partner he was dealing with (unlike the way, for instance, a paper goods supplier today might sell to a small business rather than to the individual owner of that business). If the seller did not get paid because the other partners balked at paying, he had no direct legal recourse against them; he could sue the contracting partner for the full amount. Another unusual feature of partnership was that, unlike most contracts, it did not necessarily have a natural conclusion. The question then arises of how a partnership might be dis solved. There are several ways. It ended if the initial purpose was achieved. Any partner could renounce the arrangement,

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