Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

Quasi contracts

Black's Law Dictionary · Henry Campbell Black, M.A. · 1910

Black's Law Dictionary

In the civil law. A contractual relation arising out of transactions between the parties which give them mutual rights and obligations, but do not involve a specific and express convention or agreement between them. Keener, Quasi Co.ntr.

1; Brackett v. Norton, 4 Conn. 524, 10 Am. Dec. 179; People v. Speir, 77 N. Y. 150; Willard v. Doran. 48 Hun. 402, 1 N. Y. Supp. 5S8; Mc-Sorley v. Faulkner (Com. Pi.) 18 N. Y. Supp. 460; Rnilway Co., v. Gaffney, 65 Ohio St. 104, 6l N. E. 153.

Quasi contracts are the lawfui and purely voluntary acts of a man. from which there results any obligation whatever to a third person, and sometimes a reciprocal obligation between the parties. Civ. Code La. art.

2293.

Persons who have not contracted with each other are often regarded by the Roman law, under a certain state of facts, as if they had actually concluded a convention between themselves. The legal relation which then takes place between these persons, which has always a similarity to a contract obligation, is therefore termed "obligatio quasi ex contractu." Such a relation arises from the conducting of affairs without authority, (negotiorum gestio,) from the payment of what was not due, (solutio indebiti,) from tutorship and curatorship, and from taking possession of an inheritance.

Mackeld. Rom. Law, § 491.