Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Other Rights over Property

from nonowners and was free to sell her share of ownership (to the extent allowed by the law of sale in general). The main problems were encountered, of course, in conflicts between owners. In theory, any owner could veto any use of the prop erty intended by another, though there was no right to “roll back” actions already taken. Joint owners were also liable to the other owners if they were responsible for damage to the property. Contrast the sole owner of, say, a house, who was broadly free even to burn it down. It was also possible for any of the joint owners to go to court to force a division of prop erty, with the result that each person would be the sole owner of some part, instead of each owning a share of the whole. This required accounting for the relative shares of the parties, their respective wishes, and the preservation of overall value (no one benefits, after all, from dividing a chariot by sawing it in half). It is important to note in the case of business part nerships that Roman law had no corporations, so you couldn’t share ownership of “the business” as a whole, only of specific assets: buildings, equipment, items of stock, (slave) employees, and so on. More abstract aspects of the business (e.g., debts) could be shared indirectly by way of the contract of partner ship (see Chapter 12), and liability could be partially limited by the original contributions to the partnership. Still, there was no way to automatically link ownership to partnership.

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