Scope of Quasi-Contract
In our consideration of the Roman law of obligations, we have looked at conÂtracts — obligations arising through agreement — and delicts — obligations arising from wrongdoing.
During the classical period of Roman law, Gaius had said that ‘every obligation arises either from contract or from delict'.[2665] Despite the apparent exhaustiveness of this statement, however, contracts and delicts do not tell the whole story of obligations. Sometimes the law imposed obligations on a person without that person either having agreed or having committed any kind of wrong. Indeed, Gaius was himself aware of this: in his discussion of contracts, he mentions the situation where someone has paid money that he mistakenly believes himself to owe the recipient. An obligation of repayment is imposed on the recipient, even though the intention was to discharge an obligation rather than to create one.[2666] Clearly, then, the law of obligations covered more than just contracts and delicts. In another work, known as the Golden Words, Gaius went further: ‘Obligations arise either from contract or from wrongdoing or from some special right from various types of cause.'[2667] [2668]To say that obligations may arise ‘from some special right from various types of cause' is, however, not especially enlightening. The final stage of development in the Roman sources is the fourfold division of obligations in Justinian's Institutes, which classified these additional sources of obligation according to whether they have greater similarity to contracts or to delicts. For Justinian, obligations arise ‘from a contract, as though from a contract [quasi ex contractu], from a wrong or as though from a wrong [quasi ex malefic™]’? These two additional categories are accordingly known as quasi-contract and quasi-delict. Quasi-delict is the subject matter of Chapter 26. In this chapter we consider quasi-contract.
As presented by Justinian, the category of quasi-contracts is quite a miscellaÂneous group, with no common factor except that they involve obligations, which cannot properly be understood as arising from contract, but which, because they are not based on wrongdoing, are seen as arising ‘as though from contract'.[2669] The category includes four matters dealt with elsewhere in this book, namely the obligations of guardians towards their wards,[2670] the obligations owed by co-owners of property towards each other,[2671] the obligations owed by co-heirs of an estate to each other,[2672] and an obligation on an heir to make payments from the estate.[2673] In this chapter, we will look at the other two areas considered by Justinian, namely negotiorum gestio (unauthorised intervention in another's affairs) and, first, the case where a person has been enriched at another's expense without legal justification.
B.
More on the topic Scope of Quasi-Contract:
- Nature and Scope of Quasi-Delictual Liability
- Nature and Scope of the Law of Delicts
- CONCLUSION
- THE POLITICS OF DEFINITION OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
- III. THE JUDICIAL ANTECEDENTS OF THE INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH
- THE GENDER WAGE GAP
- SOCIAL PROTECTION AND REDISTRIBUTION