Wolff’s next topic is quasi contracts. These are no real contracts, but in a sense mere fictions. That is, in a quasi contract, the consent of a person for something is just assumed. In other words, there is not even a tacit consent, which might be implied e.g. by the actions of the person in question. Such a fictitious contract is valid, Wolff notes, only if her consent cannot be asked. For instance, if a student wants to buy some books, but cannot verify from her parents, whether she can use their money for this purchase, she might still have a right to assume that they would consent to it. Similar quasi contracts can be made, Wolff continues, if the person in question is underage or otherwise incapable of giving consent.
A particular type of quasi contract Wolff calls negotiorum gestio. In effect, this means a quasi mandate, where a person called gestor handles some affair for another person assuming that this other person would mandate her to do it, if he just knew about it. This type of contract, Wolff notes, is valid only if what gestor does is useful to the other person and if not doing it would cause some economic damage to the other person - for instance, gestor could hire someone to fix a building owned by the other, which was damaged in a fire. Gestor is also bound by strict rules: she can only do what the other person could be assumed to do in a similar situation and she has to explain her reasons for doing whatever she has done for the other. Gestor also cannot at the same time handle her own and the other person’s businesses, which would imply e.g. that she took advantage of the other’s property for her own sake. Then again, gestor shouldn’t be assumed to freely donate her time and effort for the other’s sake, but the other person is obligated to honour the gestor with some reward.
Similar quasi versions of other forms of contract can also appear in exceptional circumstances, Wolff notes. For instance, if something like food has been left for safekeeping and it is in danger of becoming spoiled, the custodian can do a quasi loan, by consuming the food and preparing to return something similar, when she meets the owner. Similarly, if a person holds a thing that is to be sold by the owner and she herself suddenly needs it, she can do a quasi purchase and prepare to pay the owner later what the owner would have suggested as a price.
Wolff also notes the possibility of quasi societas, that is, people becoming part of a same company-like project without consenting to forming such a company. Wolff calls such quasi societas also communio incidens, emphasising that members of this quasi society have incidentally received common obligations. A simple example of such communio incidens is people inheriting some piece of property that they must administer in common. Quasi societas can turn into an actual societas by members of the quasi societas agreeing on how to administer the common obligations.
A curious form of quasi contract rises in relation to what Wolff calls indebitum. Indebitum is, simply taken, something that is not a debt - in other words, if you pay indebitum, you erroneously pay something that you need not have paid or you pay it to a wrong person, to whom you do not owe it. A person receiving such erroneous payment is then under a quasi contract, whereby she has to return what was given, once she notices the error. Of course, she might have handed the thing further, and then it belongs to the person it was handed to. In such a case, she must at least give something equal in value to the original owner.
A case that might seem similar and thus involve a quasi contract is linked to notions of ob causam dari and causa non sequi. By ob causam dari Wolff means simply giving something in order to get the receiving person give or do something in return - for instance, paying a worker to fix a car. Causa non sequi refers then to a situation where this receiving person fails to do what she had to do. In this case, the receiving person should return what was given to her, just like in the case of indebitum. Yet, this obligation is no quasi contract, Wolff says, because by refusing to do what she should have done, she already has tacitly consented to returning what was given.
Wolff notes that accepting an erroneous payment of indebitum is a particular example of a more general notion of unknowingly accepting something sine causa, that is, accepting something that one doesn’t have a right to accept. In addition to accepting indebitum, Wolff notes, examples of accepting sine causa include all cases where something is accepted as a payment for something that is impossible or against the natural law. Now, if someone accepts sine causa without knowing it, she can be presumed to want to return what was given to her, if she just knew she shouldn’t have accepted it. Thus, she is under a quasi contract.
A related case is what Wolff calls accepting something quasi sine causa. In such a case, accepting itself is in accordance with the natural law, but keeping what was accepted is not. A good example happens, when a person has accepted something for a future business, which then fails to become a reality. After such quasi sine causa accepting, the person receiving the payment is obligated to return the payment to the owner. Yet, this obligation forms no quasi contract, because the person accepting tacitly assumes with this very act of accepting the obligation to return the payment.
Wolff also briefly considers contractus mixtus, in other words, contracts composed of other contracts; for instance, he notes, if a tenant farmer pays the rent of the land with a ratio of the produce of the land, the contract between the farmer and the owner is a mix of a locatio conductio (in this case, rent of something) and societas (because both the farmer and the owner share in the produce of the land). As Wolff himself also says, the primary interest does not lie in the numerous ways in which one can combine different types of contract, but in the general principle that this is possible and that the characteristics of the new contract can then be deduced from the characteristics of the components.
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