The third view is that if he has deceptively concealed the defect, he is compelled to grant a price reduction; otherwise, he is not.

An example of this: a man leases a house, then rain comes, strikes the house, causes the roof to collapse, and damages some of what is inside. We say: the lessee has the right to terminate the lease. But if the lessor says, “I will remove the defect now, without any harm coming to you,” then we say that he has no right to terminate it. So long as the defect will be removed without harm to him, he has no right of termination, because he will lose nothing.

Issue: If a man makes an agreement with a camel-owner to carry him to Mecca for Hajj and then bring him back, for example, and the camel dies along the way, is the lease terminated, or do we say that the owner of the camel is required to provide him with another camel?

The answer is the latter, because the contract is not for the particular camel itself, but rather for the service. Thus, the owner of the camel is required to provide him with another camel.

His statement: “A private employee is not liable for what his hand accidentally damages.” The author, may Allah have mercy on him, has explained to us that hired workers are of two types: a private employee and a shared employee.

What is the difference between them?

A worker hired for a specified period is a private employee, whereas one hired for a particular task is a shared employee. This becomes clear through an example:

If you hire a worker to work for you in your house, shop, or farm, he is a private employee, because his work is assessed by time: so much per month, so much per week, and so much per day.

If you hire a tailor to sew a garment for you, he is a shared employee, because his benefit is assessed by the work. The first is called “private” because his time is exclusively