KFLCC Kingdom Law 2nd Ed.

CONTRACT

263

CONTRAINTE PAR CORPS

one which must be made out, and its terms as certained, by the inference of the law from the nature and circumstances of the transaction. Compound words and phrases.—Con tract of benevolence. A contract made for the benefit of one of the contracting parties only, as a mandate or deposit.—Contract of record. A contract of record is one which has been declared and adjudicated by a court hav ing jurisdiction, or which is entered of record in obedience to, or in carrying out, the judg ments of a court. Code-Ga. 1882, § 2716.— Contract of sale. A contract by which one of the contracting parties, called the "seller," enters into an obligation to the other to cause him to have freely, by a title of proprietor, a thing, for the price of a certain sum of money, which the other contracting party, called the "buyer," on his part obliges himself to pay. Poth. Cont.; Civ. Code La 1900, art. 2439; White v. Treat (C. C.) 100 Fed 291; Sawmill Co. v. O'Shee, 111 La. 817, 35 South. 919.— Pre-contract. An obligation growing out of a contract or contractual relation, of such a nature that it debars the party from legally entering into a similar contract at a later time with any other person; particularly applied to marriage.—Quasi contracts. In the civil law. A contractual relation arising out of transac tions between the parties which give them mu tual rights and obligations, but do not involve a specific and express convention or agreement between them. Keener, Quasi Contr. 1; Brack ett v. Norton, 4 Conn. 524, 10 Am. Dec. 179; People v. Speir, 77 N. Y. 150; Willard v. Doran, 48 Hun, 402, 1 N. Y. Supp. 588; Mc Sorley v. Faulkner (Com. PI.) 18 N. Y. Supp. 460; Railway Co. v. Gaffney, 65 Ohio St. 104, 61 N. E. 153. Quasi contracts are the lawful and purely voluntary acts of a man, from which there results any obligation whatever to a third person, and sometimes a reciprocal obligation between the parties. Civ. Code La. art. 2293. Persons who have not contracted with each other are often regarded by the Roman law, under a certain state of facts, as if they had actually concluded a convention between them selves. The legal relation which then takes place between these persons, which has always a similarity to a contract obligation, is there fore termed "obligatio quasi em contractu." Such a relation arises from the conducting of affairs without authority, (negotiorum gestio,) from the payment of what was not due, (solutio indeotti,) from tutorship and curatorship, and from taking possession of an inheritance. Mackeld. Rom. Law, § 491.—Subcontract. A contract subordinate to another contract, made or intended to be made between the con tracting parties, on one part, or some of them, and a stranger. 1 H. Bl. 37, 45. Where a per son has contracted for the performance of cer tain work, (e. g., to build a house,) and he in turn engages a third party to perform the whole or a part of that which is included in the original contract, (e. g., to do the carpenter work,) his agreement with such third person is called a "subcontract," and such person is call ed a "subcontractor." Central Trust Co. v. Railroad Co. (C. C.) 54 Fed. 723; Lester v. Houston, 101 N. C. 605, 8 S. E. 366. CONTRACTION. Abbreviation; abridg ment or shortening of a word by omitting a letter or letters or a syllable, with a mark over the place where the elision occurs. This was customary in records written in the an cient "court hand," and is frequently found in the books printed in black-letter. This term is strictly applicable to any person who enters into a contract, (Kent v. Railroad Co., 12 N. Y. 628.) CONTRACTOR.

but is commonly reserved to designate one who, for a fixed price, undertakes to pro cure the performance of works on a large scale, or the furnishing of goods in large quantities, whether for the public or a com pany or individual, (McCarthy v. Second Parish, 71 Me. 318, 36 Am. Rep 320; Brown v. Trust Co., 174 Pa. 443, 34 Atl. 335.) CONTRACTUS. Lat Contract; a con tract ; „ contracts. —Contractus bonae fidei. In Roman law. Contracts of good faith. Those contracts which, when brought into litigation, were not deter mined by the rules of the strict law alone, but allowed the judge to examine into the bona fides of the transaction, and to hear equitable con siderations against their enforcement. In this they were opposed to contracts stricti juris, against which equitable defenses could not be entertained.—Contractus civiles. In Roman law. Civil contracts. Those contracts which were recognized as actionable by the strict civil law of Rome, or as being founded upon a par ticular statute, as distinguished from those which could not be enforced in the courts ex cept by the aid of the praetor, who, through his equitable powers, gave an action upon them. The latter were called "contractus prcetorii." Contractus est quasi actus contra ac tum. 2 Coke, 15. A contract Is, as it were, act against act Contractus ex turpi causa, vel contra bonos mores, nullus est. A contract founded on a base consideration, or against good morals, is null. Hob. 167. Contractus legem ex conventione ac cipiunt . Contracts receive legal sanction from the agreement of the parties. Dig. 16, 3, 1, 6. To dis prove. To prove a fact contrary to what has been asserted by a witness. A phrase of which the parts are expressly in consistent, as, e. g., "an innocent murder;" "a fee-simple for life." CONTR^ESCRTTURA. In Spanish law. A counter-writing; counter-letter. A docu ment executed at the same time with an act of sale or other instrument, and operating by way of defeasance or otherwise modifying the apparent effect and purport of the orig inal instrument. CONTRADICT. In practice. CONTRADICTION IN TERMS.

CONTRAFACTIO.

Counterfeiting; as counterfeiting the

contrafactio

sigilli regis,

king's seal. Cowell.

CONTRAINTE PAR CORPS. In French law. The civil process of arrest of the person, which is imposed upon vendors falsely representing their property to be un incumbered, or upon persons mortgaging property which they are aware does not be long to them, and in other cases of moral heinousness. Brown.