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Personal Injury:
Detailed regulations addressed injuries—specific compensations for loss of eye, finger, tooth. The severity determined the payment, with adjustments for permanent disability, suffering, and medical expenses.
A cut that healed quickly warranted minimal payment. A wound that left permanent scar or disability required substantial compensation, sometimes including ongoing support if the victim could no longer work.
Property Disputes:
Extensive law governed property—boundaries, trespass, damage to crops by wandering animals, theft, unauthorized use.
If your cattle wandered onto my field and ate my crops, you owed compensation proportional to the damage. But if my fence was inadequate, my compensation was reduced—I had failed to protect my property properly.
Contract Law:
Complex regulations governed contracts—sales, loans, labor agreements, service contracts. The terms had to be witnessed, the performance verified, the compensation specified.
Breach of contract required payment to the injured party, return of any goods exchanged, and often additional penalty for the dishonor of breaking one’s word.
Marriage and Divorce:
Multiple forms of marriage existed, each with different legal implications. Divorce was permitted for numerous reasons, with property division determined by which party bore responsibility for the marriage’s failure.
Women could initiate divorce and, in many cases, left the marriage with more property than they brought to it—compensation for years of labor, child-rearing, household management.
Homicide:
Killing another person required payment of honor-price plus additional compensation. Accidental killing (without malice or negligence) required lower payment. Justified killing (self-defense, defense of property) might require no payment.
Murder (deliberate, planned killing) could result in outlawry—expulsion from legal protection, making the killer fair game for the victim’s family to hunt down and kill without legal consequence.
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