The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations

 
26
Cass com
 
(20 March 1972) 

1972

Bulletin des Arrêts de la Chambre Civile de la Cour de 
Cassation (Bull civ) IV, No 93; Cass com (3 October 1978) 

1980

Recueil Dalloz Sirey 55 ff. 
27
Hedley Byrne
v Heller & Partners
[1964] Appeal Cases (AC) 465. 
28
For a comparative survey, see Note 1 to Art 2:301 PECL; for more detailed analysis, see 
Beale
et 
al
, (fn 1) 250–293. 
29
See below at fn 131. 
30
Entscheidungen des Reichsgerichts in Zivilsachen (RGZ) 78, 239 ff (7 December 1911 – 
Linoleumrolle
); 
W Ernst
in:
 
Münchener Kommentar zum BGB (5th edn 2007) § 280, [2], [8], [89] f, 
[93] ff and especially [102] ff, with further references. 
31
HLA Hart
, Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence (1953) 5 ff; 
N Jansen
, 
„
Tief ist der Brunnen der 
Vergangenheit‟. Funktion, Methode und Ausgangspunkt historischer Fragestellungen in der 
Privatrechtsdogmatik (2005) 27 Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte (ZNR) 202, 210 ff, 213 ff.
32
Gaius
, Institutiones
 
III, 88; see also 
Gaius
, D 44, 7, 1 pr. 
33
Aristoteles
, Nikomachean Ethics, 1130 b 30 ff (I have used the German edition by 
O Gigon/R Nickel (2001)). 
34
Kötz
(fn 1) 7–13. 

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7 
often more concerned with the results of actual cases than with the conceptual 
integrity of their systems. The German Civil Code‟s delictual rule on vicarious 
liability (§ 831 BGB), for example, was drafted in such an inappropriately narrow 
way
35
that the 
Reichsgericht
, the Supreme Court of the German Empire, 
consciously had recourse to contract law in order to circumvent the constraints of 
the law of delict.
36
This recourse to contract law must therefore be regarded as a 
special path (
Sonderweg
) accidentally taken by German law. It should find no place 
in a more principled, doctrinally clear reconstruction of European private law 
today.
37
Thus, the distinction between contractual and non-contractual obligations, even if 
not very sharp from the comparative lawyer‟s empirical point of view, proves to be 
helpful, and even indispensable, for an adequate doctrinal reconstruction of 
European private law. At the same time, this example shows that principles of 
European private law cannot be found by descriptive comparison alone as a kind of 
doctrinal „common core‟. Such principles must be based on legal argument and they 
cannot always be in full accordance with the doctrinal peculiarities of all European 
systems. Indeed, in the treatises on European private law, the proper place for such 
peculiarities, or „local variations on a European theme‟, is in the footnotes.
38
However, other problems of classification may be more difficult to resolve. 
One of them concerns the question of liability for pre-contractual misbehaviour and 
wrongful statements, already mentioned above. Here it appears that both contractual 
and non-contractual principles apply. Thus, although classifying such a claim under 
negligence, the common law requires the defendant to have „assumed 
responsibility‟ in quasi-contractual terms.
39
Another similarly difficult question 
concerns the place in the legal system of claims based on unjustified enrichment. 
Many of the Roman 
condictiones
, the major Roman source of the modern civilian 
law of unjustified enrichment,
40
would be classified – from a modern European 
perspective – as contractual obligations;
41
and indeed much of the modern law of 
35
Specifically, liability is made dependent on some fault on the principal‟s side: „A person who uses 
another person to perform a task is liable to make compensation for the damage that the other 
unlawfully inflicts on a third party when carrying out the task. Liability in damages does not apply if 
the principal exercises reasonable care when selecting the person deployed and, to the extent that he 
is to procure devices or equipment or to manage the business activity, in the procurement or 
management, or if the damage would have occurred even if this care had been exercised‟ (§ 831 (1) 
BGB). Such fault is not easily found, especially where large companies are concerned.
 
36
RGZ 78, 239 ff (7 December 1911 –