The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations

III. Concluding remarks 
These ideas concerning the concept of non-contractual obligations and its traditional 
divisions should not be misunderstood as aiming at comprehensiveness; further 
work will be necessary for fully exploring this concept. On the one hand, important 
aspects of non-contractual obligations have not been discussed at all. For example, 
the recovery of unauthorised expenditure on someone else‟s property must clearly 
find a place within the law of non-contractual obligations: such claims are 
independent of a contractual relationship between the owner and the possessor and 
may be treated alongside the claims that are based on enrichment resulting from the 
encroachment. Yet this is a difficult question to be treated in a different article. 
On the other hand, civil lawyers might miss a discussion of 
negotiorum 
gestio
(
Geschäftsführung ohne Auftrag
/
gestion d’affaires d’autrui
) which is often 
seen, alongside tort law and unjustified enrichment, as a third class of non-
contractual obligation. However, this institution was originally a highly specific 
expression of unique features of the social morality of ancient Rome.
135
It is 
doubtful whether it fulfils any sensible function in modern law.
136
The common law 
developed well without such a concept,
137
and already Grotius suggested to throw it 
out altogether from the civilian systems of private law.
138
Modern comparative 
lawyers have agreed.
139
In any event, this discussion suffices to show that there is not yet a generally 
135
N Jansen
, in: HKK (fn 21) vol III (forthcoming 2010) §§ 677–687, [8] ff. 
136
For a more detailed account, see 
N Jansen
, Negotiorum gestio und Benevolent Intervention in 
Another‟s Affairs: Principles of European Law? (2007) 15 ZEuP 958; cf also 
L Rademacher
, Die 
Geschäftsführung ohne Auftrag im europäischen Privatrecht [2008] JURA 87, 94 f; 
HP Westermann
, 
Die negotiorum gestio als Gegenstand europäischer Gesetzgebung, in: Festschrift für Dieter Medicus 
zum 80. Geburtstag (2009) 611, 628 f. 
137
„The general principle is, beyond all question, that work and labour done or money expended by 
one man to preserve or benefit the property of another do not according to English law create any 
lien upon the property saved or benefited, nor, even if standing alone, create any obligation to repay 
the expenditure‟: 
Falcke v Scottish, Imperial Insurance 
(1887) 34 Law Reports, Chancery Division 
(ChD) 234, 248 (per Bowen LJ); more recently 
The Goring
[1987] Queen‟s Bench (QB) 687, 708 
(per Ralph Gibson LJ;
 
confirmed in [1988] 1 AC 831): „The common law has never recognised any 
general doctrine of necessitous intervention by a stranger‟. See, more detailed, 
Birks/Mitchell
(fn 46) 
vol II [15–156] ff; 
H Dagan
, The Law and Ethics of Restitution (2004) 86 ff, with further references. 
138
H Grotius
, De iure belli ac pacis libri tres, cum notis Jo.Fr. Gronovii et Joannis Barbeyracii 
(Leipzig 1758) lib II, cap X, § 9: „Nam negotiorum gestorum actio ex lege civili nascitur: nullum 
enim habet eorum fundamentorum ex quibus natura obligationem inducit‟.
139
Cf 
JP Dawson
, Negotiorum Gestio: The Altruistic Intermeddler (1961) 74 Harvard LR 817 ff, 
1073 ff (2 Parts); 
SJ Stoljar
, Negotiorum gestio, in: IECL X/17 (1984). Both authors have plausibly 
argued that the extensive use of this institution in some civilian systems leads to a wrong result 
which is unfortunate from a doctrinal point of view. Yet the abstract notion of