Breach of Contract and Redhibitory Defects in the Contract of Sale

Abstract

How does coexist a general regime of remedies and a special one (latent defects)? We suggest they radically overlap so we need a way to disentangle them. We suggest a distinction for making things easier between generic and specific obligations. Our opinion is that in the former there is no space for the special regime of latent defects, every possible case of latent defects if absorbed by the material aliud pro alio and therefore treated as a case of breach of delivery. Meanwhile in the specific obligations there is plenty room for latent defects, nevertheless, Chilean courts have not been consistent in their decisions, using, indistinctly, the general regimen and the special.