CHAPTER V: ON MANDATE AND MANAGEMENT OF AFFAIRS

925. • Mandate is a contract by which an obligation of doing something for the convenience of another is gratuitously taken up, for example of completing some business, buying something, selling, etc.... I have said: gratuitously; for if it is taken up for an agreed price, it is rather named a hiring of work.

1° He ought to fulfill all obligations contracted by the mandatary and consonant with the mandate; but not that which has been done beyond the mandate, unless he has expressly or tacitly held it ratified.

2° He ought to furnish to the mandatary those things which are necessary for the execution of the mandate, and refund to him the legitimate expenses which he made on occasion of the mandate, even if he did not lead the matter to a happy outcome.

3° He is bound to render the mandatary unharmed by reason of damages which, culpable imprudence being set aside, he suffered on occasion of the mandate; for no one is bound, nor is he judged to wish, to confer a benefit on another with his own loss.

926. • 1° He is bound to conduct the business of the one mandating diligently and as his own. Whence he is bound at least for fraud and theologically culpable negligence.

2° He ought to contain himself within the limits of the mandate. Whence he can buy nothing at more, or sell at less, than has been prescribed to him; for otherwise he would not act by force of the mandate.

3° He cannot exact wages unless they have been promised, or he himself previously asked for them; nor is it licit for him secretly to compensate his work.

4° Of himself he cannot retain profit for himself if he sells, nor an excess of price if he buys below the determined price, unless the owner consents. Yet by accident the mandatary can retain the excess of price: 1° if the thing has become better by his special industry and undue labor; 2° if he tacitly agreed with the owner that he would give nothing to him beyond the determined price or value; 3° if, for the mere favor of the mandatary himself, the seller diminished the price or the buyer offered a greater sum; 4° if the profit is of small moment; 5° if, ordinary diligence having been used and a greater price not found, you buy the thing for yourself, and afterward sell it for more, and pay to the owner only the assigned price. Resolve the same if another committed to you to buy something at such a price, and you find the thing at a lesser price; namely, then you will be able to buy the thing for yourself, and afterward sell it at a greater price, provided that afterward, ordinary diligence having been used, you would not have found the occasion of buying the thing except at that greater price.¹

Mandate is broken in three ways: 1° by revocation of the mandate, which the one mandating can make at pleasure; 2° by renunciation of the mandatary, notified at the due time; 3° by natural or civil death, or interdiction either of the one mandating or of the mandatary.

927. • Management of affairs is a certain quasi-contract by which someone takes up the business of an absent and ignorant person to be usefully conducted, without express mandate, but from his commission reasonably presumed.

1° The manager of the affair, just as the mandatary, is bound to administer the thing of another as a good father of a family, and to repair damages inflicted on the absent person from his fraud, negligence, or fault. Yet in many circumstances the obligation of compensating damages can be moderated, especially when those arise from the inexperience or negligence of a manager who took up the thing of another to be conducted in defect of one more skilled.

2° The absent person whose business is conducted is bound to observe agreements rightly made by the manager, and to repair to him expenses and damages arising from such management, even if the matter has succeeded badly.

More probably he has a right to suitable wages; for otherwise few will be found who spontaneously take up the affairs of an absent person to be conducted. - Thus Antoine² and others.