Elements of the Law of Contracts; By Edward Avery Harriman (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: impossibility. Nevertheless, in the case of many " contracts," using the word in its broadest sense, we find existing an obligation with certain definite characteristics which can easily be recognized. This obligation we shall venture to call "contractual." Of the formation of this contractual obligation, of its construction, its assignment, its extinction, and its enforcement, this book is to treat. How then are we to distinguish contractual obligation from other legal obligations? In the first place, looking at the endless variety of obligations which the courts enforce, we notice that some obligations are imposed upon a person without his consent, and without regard to any act of his own, while other obligations are the result of a voluntary act on the part of the person on whom they are imposed. The former may be termed irrecusable, the latter recusable obligations. A clear example of irrecusable obligation is the obligation imposed on every man not to strike another without some lawful excuse. Here the obligation is entirely independent of any act on the part of the person bound by it. In the case of recusable obligations, on the other hand, some act on the part of the person bound is a condition precedent to the genesis of the obligation. Eecusable obligations are either definite or indefinite in their character, according as the extent of the obligation is or is not determined by the act of the party on whom the obligation is imposed. Indefinite recusable obligations may result from the fact that the party bound has undertaken to do something. The undertaking may be general, as where one engages in a public vocation, or it may be particular, being simply the undertaking of a specific act or trust. Thus the obligation of an innkeeper to receive guests, and the obligati...