1. The sale of a thing for which the buyer paid less than half its real value. • The seller could rescind the sale, but the buyer could keep the item purchased by paying the full value. Generally, this doctrine was limited to land sales.
2. The injury sustained by one party to an onerous contract when the overreaching party receives twice the value of that party’s money or property, such as a purchaser who pays less than half the value of the property sold, or a seller who receives more than double the property’s value. • If coowner coheirs partition or sell property, laesio enormis may exist when the purchaser pays less than one-fourth of the value rather than one-half. See La. Civ. Code arts. 824, 1406. — Also spelled lesio enormis.
— Also termed lesion; enorm lesion; (in full) laesio enormis vel ultra dimidium (lee-shee-oh i-nor-mis vel [schwa]l-tr[schwa] di-mid-ee-[schwa]m); (in Louisiana) lesion beyond moiety.
“Lesion (laesio enormis) was the rule, established very late, that a seller could rescind a contract if he had received less than half its real value …. [I]n spite of its imperfections, lesion not only was adopted in all modern civilian systems (French Code Civil 1674–1683), but became the means of testing the validity of contracts generally by their fairness, a principle embodied in the German Civil Code (section 138) and the Swiss Code of Obligations (section 21). Such a test is no more difficult to apply in law than in equity, where it has long been established in our system. As the Romans applied it, it was a clumsy and inadequate way of reaching this result. In modern courts, in civil-law countries, it invests judges with a discretion not very likely to be abused, but sufficient to act as a deterrent to the grosser forms of economic exploitation.” Max Radin, Handbook of Roman Law 233–34 (1927).
