The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations

Saldotheorie
: BGHZ 78, 216, 223 f (9 October 1980). Likewise, the rule has always 
been regarded as good law under the English action for money had and received; see 
Stoljar
(1959) 
75 LQR, 59 f, with further references; see also [1923] 2 King‟s Bench (KB) 500 ff: damages 
resulting from the examination of the object sold, necessary to prove a breach of contract;
 
Cass 1st 
civ (23 February 1970) 

1970

Juris Classeur Periodique (JCP) II, No 16347. 
78
Cases where one party has been deceived by the other party are especially difficult. The German 
courts do not apply the 
Saldotheorie
, because there is no need or justification to protect the 
mala fide
defendant against the 
bona fide
claimant: BGHZ 53, 144, 147 f (8 January 1970); 57, 137, 147 ff 
(14 October 1971). In both cases, buyers of cars had been deceived by the seller; yet this had become 
apparent only after the cars had been destroyed in accidents. The BGH nevertheless allowed the 
buyers to claim back the contractual price without making compensation for the destroyed cars. 
These decisions have been criticized on the basis of comparative law arguments; see 
König
(fn 57) 
105 ff. However, today the question appears to be so disputed or contested in Europe (see 
Schlechtriem
(fn 3) vol I, 577 ff, with further references) that comparative observations are of little 

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15 
enrichment, namely that liability is limited by the increase in the defendant‟s assets, 
runs directly against the basic policy of contract law that each party bears full 
responsibility to return what it has received from the other party.
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All this leads to the conclusion that the law of unjustified enrichment cannot 
be understood as a suitable tool for unwinding contracts. The reversal of contracts 
should be discussed exclusively in the context of contract law.
80
This is indeed the 
functional approach of many, more pragmatic national legal systems in Europe,
81
of 
the UNIDROIT 
Principles
and the 
Principles of European Contract Law
.
82
The 
same approach has long been adopted also by European private international law, 
where such claims are qualified as contractual even if they are based on a void 
contract.
83
None of these systems has been irritated by the formalistic consideration 
that a void contract cannot give rise to claims in contract law. Indeed, the basic 
classification of legal claims should not depend on niceties of doctrinal 
construction. Doctrine is a means of presenting the law in an easily accessible way. 
Doctrinal categories should therefore be expected to reconstruct the substance of the 
law adequately; they must not be reified. It would be misleading to take doctrinal 
categories as a given, pre-existing structure, into which legal rules and policies can 
then be placed. Doctrine must respond to the law‟s normative structure, to its basic 
principles and rules, and not vice versa. 
Seen from such a functional perspective, contract law is the part of the law 
which governs contractual agreements. Hence, if a contractual agreement is without 
legal effect for reasons of contract law policy, the resulting remedies must be 
understood as contractual in nature, because they are the very expression of this 
contract law policy. It follows that „contract‟ and „agreement‟ must in such a 
context be seen as descriptive, not normative concepts: void contracts, too, are 
help. 
79
Cf 
U Huber
, Leistungsstörungen. Empfiehlt sich die Einführung eines Leistungsstörungsrechts 
nach dem Vorbild des Einheitlichen Kaufgesetzes? Welche Änderungen im Gesetzestext und welche 
Auswirkungen im Schuldrecht würden sich dabei ergeben?, in: Bundesminister der Justiz (ed), 
Gutachten und Vorschläge zur Überarbeitung des Schuldrechts, vol I (1981) 647–909, 735 f.
80