ARTICLE IV: On Mandate and Management of Another's Affair

1088. • I. Mandate is a contract by which someone commits to another accepting a matter to be managed in his name. - He who undertakes the office of managing the matter is called mandatary; the one mandating, he who commits it.⁰¹

It belongs to the essence of this contract that the mandatary act the person of the one mandating, so that the things which he does by force of the mandate are held as done by the one mandating. But gratuitousness belongs only to the nature of this contract (cf. n. 1032). Therefore a mandate is considered undertaken gratis, unless a price is sanctioned either expressly or tacitly, for example by reason of the office which the mandatary exercises. Nor does a mandate, on account of an added stipend, pass into a hiring of work, since its essence is not destroyed by such a disposition. Cf. nevertheless what we shall say n. 1141.

Mandate is TWOFOLD: 1. special, if it comprises only one business, or certain determined businesses; 2. general, if it extends itself to all the businesses of the one mandating which are of pure administration.

Among MANDATARIES are numbered the vicars of merchants, who buy and sell wares; those placed over factories, who hire craftsmen and complete agreements; representatives of commerce, brokers (cf. n. 1140), procurators, syndics in cession of goods, etc., etc.2

1089. The one MANDATING is held: 1. to furnish the things necessary for the execution of the mandate, and to pay expenses made; 2. to fulfill obligations contracted by the mandatary and consonant with the mandate; 3. to preserve the mandatary unharmed concerning damages.

1090. The obligations of the MANDATARY are: 1. not to exceed the limits of the mandate; - 2. to manage the business diligently; - 3. to render an account to the one mandating concerning the matter managed, and to restore to him whatever he perceived by force of the mandate, whether by title of gain or by title of gift; because he does not acquire for himself.

A mandate is extinguished: a) when the business committed is finished; b) by revocation of the mandate, which the one mandating can make at will; c) by renunciation of the mandatary notified at the due time; d) by natural or civil death, or interdiction, either of the one mandating or of the mandatary; but in Germany, only by the death of the mandatary.⁰²

1091. • II. Management of an affair is a certain quasi-contract by which someone undertakes the useful management of the affair of an absent person, without an express or tacit mandate, but from his reasonably presumed commission. It is a presumed mandate.⁰³

1. The manager of the affair IS HELD to administer diligently the matter of another until the owner has provided; to repair damages inflicted from his own fault. Yet in many circumstances the obligation of compensating damages can be tempered, especially when these proceed from the unskillfulness of a benevolent manager, in defect of a more skilled one. - More probably, he has a right to a fitting wage; otherwise few would be found who would wish to manage the affairs of absent persons. Cf. Ami du Cl., 1912, p. 927.

2. The absent person whose business is managed well IS HELD to observe agreements duly made by the manager, and to repay to him expenses and damages arising from such management, even if, notwithstanding the good management, the matter had an evil success.⁰⁴ See the things said above n. 885.