„Causa legittimae absentiae“ in Legal Praxis of the Medieval Town Law in Moravia

Municipal books Liber negotiorum civitatis Hradisch and Liber informationum et sententiarum include a large amount of case law, which Moravian royal town Uherské Hradiště received from Brno in Middle Ages. Some of these cases were decided in accordance with the Roman law principle that did not allow to give the default judgement in the event that a party, which did not come to the court, correctly apologized for his or her absence. Town law of Brno was based on Roman law and it also applies to the case of causa absentia. The analysis of the relevant case law partly shows that Roman law procedural rules concerning the consequences of absence in the court were applied also in Brno and Uherské Hradiště legal practice.