A “quasi contract” is a court-mandated agreement between two people who don’t have a legal contract with one another. Its purpose is to make sure that one party doesn’t unfairly benefit at the financial expense of the other. To see how this works in real life, let’s take a sneak peak into the lives of Paul and Simon, next-door neighbors and BFFs for life. At least, Paul thought they were BFFs for life…until the incident with the fence.
Paul learned way back in a high school English class that good fences make good neighbors, so he's always done his part to make sure that the fence between his yard and Simon’s yard is properly maintained. But they had a really bad storm season this year, and now it looks like the fence is going to have to be replaced in its entirety. Simon is out of town, so Paul takes it upon himself to hire a fence builder and get ‘er done, confident that Simon will cover half of the cost when he gets back. But to Paul’s surprise, when he shows Simon the bill, he refuses to pay for his part. With a heavy heart, Paul decides to take him to court.
Even though there is no written contract between Paul and Simon regarding the fence, the court decides that Simon is, in fact, liable for half the cost of the fence replacement. This is a quasi contract. Since Simon benefitted from the expenditure—he’s got a snazzy new fence along one side of his backyard—the court feels like he should pay for that benefit, and so they rule that he now legally owes Paul for half of the bill.
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Finance a la shmoop what is a commitment letter? dear Rebecca it's been fun and
all but asking me to move in with you was a real turnoff so uh have a nice [Rebecca reading letter]
life yeah that would be a fear of commitment letter I know that one well
well so what's a commitment letter then all right well you need dough but you
don't need it today you need it in six months when construction is finished on
your cabin by the lake at that point you'll convert your very expensive
building loan into a normal mortgage well you can go to the bank and for a [Man walks into bank]
small ish fee get a commitment letter from them which stipulates that assuming
nothing material changes between now and then you will in fact then get a loan
for one hundred fifty two thousand dollars at 5 percent fixed interest rate
for 30 years the bank is then committed to giving you that loan when you know [Contract stamped with committed]
eventually you need it that way you don't have to worry about your bank you
know breaking up with you which is nice because it's tough getting
the It's not you it's me speech from a guy in a bowtie [Man wearing bow tie talking to a man in the bank]
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