Page:Civil code of Japan compared with French (1902-06-01).pdf/15

Rh Codes, nothing is said regarding the object of association, and the contract of association is defined to be simply a contract in which several parties agree to contribute money, or other things, and engage in a joint undertaking.

— When parties agree to settle their disputes by making mutual concessions, such agreements are called amicable arrangement. Concerning the effect of this kind of contract, the French law prescribes that it has the authority of a final judgment. The logical consequence of this is that if a thing, the ownership of which is disputed between two parties, is determined by amicable arrangement to belong to one of them, the party thus taking the thing is deemed to have been the real owner from the beginning. The ownership is not considered to be conferred on him by the arrangement. This presumption may in some cases prove injurious, for if the title to a thing should be attacked by a third person, it could only be defended by opposing the rights of one of the parties, whereas by opposing the rights of both parties the attack might be successfully resisted. The Japanese Code does not place amicable arrangement on the same footing as a final judgment, but merely states that, if by an amicable arrangement, it is settled that one of the parties possesses, or that the other party does not possess, the right which was the subject of the dispute, and conclusive proof is afterward produced that this right did not previously belong to the party first mentioned, or that it did belong to the other party, such right will be regarded as having, by the arrangement in question, been either transferred to the first mentioned party, or extinguished.

— The term “,” or the management of business, is applied to cases where one person assumes the management of another person’s affairs without being bound or authorized to do so. The rights and duties arising out of such relations are considered in the French Code under the head of quasi-contracts. In the Roman law they were treated as illegal acts. The French law does not go so far as the Roman law, but it looks on such a person with a suspicious eye, and if he obtains for himself any benefit by the management, he is obliged to restore it as an improper profit. But later legislative precedents give this relation a distinct heading and treat it on the same footing as a contract or other obligation. The management of another person’s affairs is now deemed to be undertaken with good intentions to protect the interests of the principal. No harm is meant to the principal, nor is it based on any benefit which might accrue to the manager. In a