Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/681

* QUASI CONTRACT. 597 QUATERNIONS. property taken from the plaintiff by the defend- ant's tortious act. Torts therefore give rise to quasi contracts only when the tort feasor has by his wrongdoing enriched himself at the expense of the plaintifl'. Thus, if the defendant's tort consists in merely the injury to or destruction of the plaintiti's property without direct benefit to the defendant, the sole remedy is in tort. The Plaintiff ix Default Under a Con- TB.CT. In general a plaintifl" who is in default under a contract has no right either upon the contract or in quasi contract. If, however, per- formance by the plaintifl' has become impossible and the contract is one which may be said to eon- template impossibility of performance so that the impossibility is an excuse for the plaintifl"s non-performance, he may recover in quasi con- tract the value of the performance which he has already given under the contract. Thus in con- tracts for personal service, if one is unable to perform because of sickness or death, he or his estate is entitled to recover the reasonable value of services rendered, up to the time of the impossibility of performance. When the plaintiff is in default under a contract which the courts will not enforce be- cause it is illegal, he may recover the actual value of his performance already rendered if the contract is milium prohibitum (q.v.) only, but in case of contracts malum in se the law leaves the parties to it without relief. The Defendant in Default Undeb a Con- TR.iCT. When a defendant is in default under a contract because performance by him has become impossible, the plaintiff is entitled to recover in quasi contract for benefits conferred by him upon the defendant provided the defendant's failure to perform is total, or if partial only it may be apportioned to the excess of benefits given by the plaintifl': and this is permitted irrespec- tive of the liability of the defendant to respond in damages for breach of con- tract. Thus freight money paid in advance may be recovered from the carrier if performance by him becomes impossible: or if one has paid in advance for the personal services of another who is unable to perform because of sickness or death, he may recover in quasi con- tract the proportion of the compensation remain- ing unearned. The same rule of recovery is ap- plied whenever the defendant is willfully or in- excusably in default under his contract under such circumstances that he may be said to have abandoned the contract. In ease the defendant is in default under a contract which is illegal, the plaintiff's right of recovery in quasi contract depends upon the character of the contract. If the contract is malum in se there can be no re- covery in quasi contract. If it is malum pro- hihitum there can still be no recovery if the plaintiff is in equal wrong (in pari delicto) with the defendant. If, however, the plaintiff is not in pari delicto, he may recover the value of the performance which he has given to the defendant under his contract. In general, whenever a defendant is in default under a contract which cannot be enforced be- cause it does not coxnply with the statute of frauds, the plaintiff may recover the money value of the performance which he has given to the defendant under his contract. The measure of recovery, as in all other cases of quasi contract, is the value of the benefit conferred on the defend- ant by the plaintiff, and not necessarily the con- tract price. In all cases the basis of recovery is the duty of the defendant to restore to the plaintiff money or money value of property which he has received at the plaintiff's expense and which upon legal or equitable grounds he should return to the plaintiff. Consult Keener, The Law of Quasi Contracts (Xew York, 1893). QUA'SIMO'DO, Fr. pron. ka'z*'m6'd<i'. In Hugo's yotre Dame de Paris, the hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame, so named by Arch- deacon Frollo, who found him on Quasimodo Sunday. His love for the gypsy Esmeralda led him to save her from punishment as a witch and to give her an asylum in the cathedral. Mien she was enticed away by Frollo and finally abandoned by him to death for witchcraft, Quasi- modo threw Frollo from the cathedral battle- ments, and died in the cave where Esmeralda's body had been cast. QUASSIA (Xeo-Lat., from Quassi Coissi, name of a Surinam slave who used its bark as a remedy for fever). A genus of trees and shrubs of the natural order Simarubaceae. Quassia amara, a native of tropical America, is a shrub 10 to 1.5 feet high, with racemes of bright-red flowers, and large pinnate leaves, with remark- ably winged and pointed leafstalks. The wood, and particularly that of the root, is intensely QUASSIA. bitter, and was formerly used in medicine under the names of quassia-wood, bitterwood, etc. Cabi- net work made of it is free from insect attacks. The wood of Quassia excelsa (see Bitter wood) is used as a substitute for quassia to increase the bitterness of beer, being cheaper than hops. Beer so made is said to become muddy and flat. QUATERNARY PERIOD (Lat. quaterra- rius. consisting of four, from tjuatemi, four each, from quattuor. four). A term employed to char- acterize the Post-Tertiary strata. See Pleis- tocene Period. QUATERNIONS (Lat. quaternio, group of four, from quaterni. four each). A branch of mathematics invented by Sir William Rowan Hamilton (q.v.) in the "first half of the nine- teenth century. It extehds the idea of complex numbers (seeCosrPLEX XrsniER) to three-dimen- sional space, and besides being interesting as a