Short answer. Yes. Under Article 1493, when only part of the specific thing sold was already lost before the sale was perfected, the buyer gets to choose: withdraw from the contract entirely, or keep the surviving part and pay only a proportionate share of the agreed price instead of the full amount.
What the law says
the vendee may choose between withdrawing from the contract and demanding the remaining part, paying its price in proportion to the total sum agreed upon
Civil Code, Article 1493 — Loss of the Thing at Perfection. Read the full provision →
Total loss and partial loss are treated differently
A thing entirely lost before the sale was perfected makes the contract void automatically, with neither side having a choice in the matter. Partial loss works differently. Because only part of what the buyer expected is gone, the law hands the decision to the buyer rather than the seller, since it is the buyer's bargain, not the seller's, that was disrupted by the earlier loss.
How the proportional price works
The buyer pays only the fraction of the price corresponding to what remains. If a shipment of one hundred identified sacks of rice was already the object of a perfected sale but forty sacks had already spoiled beforehand, the buyer may take the surviving sixty sacks and pay only sixty percent of the price the parties had agreed on for the whole lot, rather than the full amount for goods he never fully receives.
The choice belongs to the buyer, not the seller
Because the article says the vendee may choose, a seller cannot force the buyer to accept a reduced quantity at a reduced price, and cannot insist on cancelling the whole sale if the buyer would rather keep and pay for what survived. Either option is available, and the decision of which one to exercise is the buyer's alone to make, not something the seller can dictate. The rule binds the seller directly: if the buyer elects to take the surviving part and tenders the proportionate price, a seller who refuses to deliver that remaining portion, or who insists on the full original price anyway, is in breach and exposes himself to an action for specific performance or damages, on top of whatever the buyer already validly withheld.
This rule is for specific, already-existing goods
The article speaks of the thing which is the object of the contract, so it applies to sales of specific, identified goods that already existed when the sale was perfected. It does not cover generic goods a seller could simply replace, since there the seller normally remains bound to deliver equivalent goods rather than invoking loss at all, and this proportional-price option would not come into play. It also does not extend to loss occurring after the sale was perfected and risk had already passed to the buyer, a situation governed by separate rules on which party bears post-perfection risk rather than by this article's buyer's-choice mechanism.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1493 — Loss of the Thing at Perfection
- Civil Code, Article 1494 — Partial Loss of Specific Goods