Obligation Articles

1756 - Obligations

An obligation is a legal relationship whereby a person, called the obligor, is bound to render a performance in favor of another, called the obligee. Performance may consist of giving, doing, or not doing something.

1906 - Contract

A contract is an agreement by two or more parties whereby obligations are created, modified, or extinguished.

1758 - Rights of Obligee

An obligation may give the obligee the right to:

(1) Enforce the performance that the obligor is bound to render;

(2) Enforce performance by causing it to be rendered by another at the obligor's expense;

(3) Recover damages for the obligor's failure to perform, or his defective or delayed performance.

1758 - Rights of Obligor

B. An obligation may give the obligor the right to:

(1) Obtain the proper discharge when he has performed in full;

(2) Contest the obligee's actions when the obligation has been extinguished or modified by a legal cause.

1918 - Capacity

All persons have capacity to contract, except unemancipated minors, interdicts, and persons deprived of reason at the time of contracting.

1919 - Capacity nullity

A contract made by a person without legal capacity is relatively null and may be rescinded only at the request of that person or his legal representative.

1927 - Consent

A contract is formed by the consent of the parties established through offer and acceptance.

1948 - Vices of Consent

Consent may be vitiated by error, fraud, or duress.

1950 - Error

Error may concern a cause when it bears on the nature of the contract, or the thing that is the contractual object or a substantial quality of that thing, or the person or the qualities of the other party, or the law, or any other circumstance that the parties regarded, or should in good faith have regarded, as a cause of the obligation.

Fraud

Fraud is a misrepresentation or a suppression of the truth made with the intention either to obtain an unjust advantage for one party or to cause a loss or inconvenience to the other. Fraud may also result from silence or inaction.

1959 - Duress

Consent is vitiated when it has been obtained by duress of such a nature as to cause a reasonable fear of unjust and considerable injury to a party's person, property, or reputation.

2031 - Relative Nullity

A contract is relatively null when it violates a rule intended for the protection of private parties, as when a party lacked capacity or did not give free consent at the time the contract was made. A contract that is only relatively null may be confirmed.

1971 - Object

Parties are free to contract for any object that is lawful, possible, and determined or determinable.

1977 - Promesse de Porte-Forte

The object of a contract may be that a third person will incur an obligation or render a performance.

The party who promised that obligation or performance is liable for damages if the third person does not bind himself or does not perform.

1978 - Stipulation Pour Autrui

A contracting party may stipulate a benefit for a third person called a third party beneficiary.

1967 - Cause

Cause is the reason why a party obligates himself.

1967 - Detrimental Reliance

A party may be obligated by a promise when he knew or should have known that the promise would induce the other party to rely on it to his detriment and the other party was reasonable in so relying.

1986 - Specific Performance

Upon an obligor's failure to perform an obligation to deliver a thing, or not to do an act, or to execute an instrument, the court shall grant specific performance plus damages for delay if the obligee so demands. If specific performance is impracticable, the court may allow damages to the obligee.

2017 - Extrajudicial Dissolution

The parties may expressly agree that the contract shall be dissolved for the failure to perform a particular obligation. In that case, the contract is deemed dissolved at the time it provides for or, in the absence of such a provision, at the time the obligee gives notice to the obligor that he avails himself of the dissolution clause.

2013 - Judicial Dissolution

When the obligor fails to perform, the obligee has a right to the judicial dissolution of the contract or, according to the circumstances, to regard the contract as dissolved. In either case, the obligee may recover damages.

In an action involving judicial dissolution, the obligor who failed to perform may be granted, according to the circumstances, an additional time to perform.

1989 - Default

Damages for delay in the performance of an obligation are owed from the time the obligor is put in default.

Other damages are owed from the time the obligor has failed to perform.

1995 - Compensatory Damages

Damages are measured by the loss sustained by the obligee and the profit of which he has been deprived.

1998 - Non-pecuniary Damages

Damages for nonpecuniary loss may be recovered when the contract … is intended to gratify a nonpecuniary interest and, because of the circumstances surrounding the formation or the nonperformance of the contract, the obligor knew, or should have known, that his failure to perform would cause that kind of loss.

Regardless of the nature of the contract, these damages may be recovered also when the obligor intended, through his failure, to aggrieve the feelings of the obligee.

2000 - Moratory Damages

When the object of the performance is a sum of money, damages for delay in performance are measured by the interest on that sum from the time it is due… The obligee may recover these damages without having to prove any loss, and whatever loss he may have suffered he can recover no more. If the parties, by written contract, have expressly agreed that the obligor shall also be liable for the obligee's attorney fees in a fixed or determinable amount, the obligee is entitled to that amount as well.

2005 - Stipulated Damages

Parties may stipulate the damages to be recovered in case of nonperformance, defective performance, or delay in performance of an obligation.

That stipulation gives rise to a secondary obligation for the purpose of enforcing the principal one.

2036 - Revocatory Action

An obligee has a right to annul an act of the obligor, or the result of a failure to act of the obligor, made or effected after the right of the obligee arose, that causes or increases the obligor's insolvency.

2044 - Oblique Action

2047 - Interpretation

The words of a contract must be given their generally prevailing meaning.

Words of art and technical terms must be given their technical meaning when the contract involves a technical matter.