LAW: Contracts (Rehash)

• A contract is an agreement between two or more parties that creates obligations enforceable by law.
• ART. 1371

  In order to judge the intention of the contracting parties, their contemporaneous and subsequent acts shall be principally considered
• ART. 1372

  However general the terms of a contract may be, they shall be understood to comprehend things that are distinct and cases that are different from those upon which the parties inted to agree
• ART. 1373

  If some stipulations of any contract should admit to several meaning, it shall be understood as bearing that import which is more adequate to render it effectual.
• ART. 1374

  The various stipulations of a contract shall be interpreted together, attributing to the doubtful ones that sense which may result to all of the. taken jointly.
• ART. 1375

  Words which may have different significations shall be understood in that which is most in keeping with the nature and object of the contract.
• ART. 1359

  When there having been a meeting of the minds of the parties to a contract, their true intention is not expressed in the instrument purporting to embody the agreement, by mistake, fraud, inequitable conduct, or accident, one of the parties may ask for reformation to the end that such true intentions may be expressed.

  If mistake, fraud, inequitable conduct, or accident, prevented the meeting of the minds of the parties, the remedy is not reformation of the instrument but annulment of the contract.
• ART. 1360

  When by mutual mistake of the parties causes the failure of the contract to disclose their real agreement, said instrument may be reformed.
• ART. 1362

  If the other party was mistaken and the other acted fraudulently or inequitably in such a way that it does not disclose their true intention, the former may ask for reformation of the instrument.
• ART. 1364

  When through the ignorance, lack of skill,negligence or bad faith of the person drafting the instrument or of the clerk or typist, the instrument does not show the real intention of the parties, the court may ask that the instrument be reformed.
• ART. 1376

  The usage or custom of the place shall be born in mind in the interpretation of the ambiguities of the contract, and shall fill the omissions which are ordinarily established.
• ART. 1378

  • When it is absolutely impossible to settle doubts by the rules established in the preceding articles, and the doubt refers to incidental circumstances of a gratuitous contract, the last transmission of rights and interests shall prevail. If the contract is onerous, the doubt shall be settled in favor of the greatest reciprocity of interest.
  • If the doubts are cast upon the principal object of the contract in such a way that it cannot be known what may have been the intention or wills of the party the contract shall be null and void.
• ART. 1356

  Contracts shall be obligatory, in whatever form they may have been entered into, provided that the essential requisites for its validity are present. However, when the law requires that a contract be in some form in order that it may be valid or enforceable, or that a contract be prove in a certain way, that requirement is absolute and indispensable. In such cases, the right of the parties stated in the following articles cannot be exercised.
• ART. 1306

  • The contracting parties may establish such stipulations, clauses, terms, and conditions as they may deem convenient, provided that they are not contrary to law, morals, good customs, public order or public policy.
• ART. 1308

  The contract shall bind both contracting parties; its validity and compliance shall not be left to the will of one of them
• ART. 1309

  The determination of a performance may be left to a third person, whose decision shall not be binding until it has been made known to both of the contracting parties.
• ART. 1319

  • Consent is manifested by the meeting of the offer and acceptance whis will constitue the contract. The offer must be certain and the acceptance must be absolute. A qualified acceptance constitutes a counter offer.
  • Acceptance made by letter or telegram does not hind the offerer except from the time it came tl his knowledge. The contract, in such case, shall be presume to have been entered intk the place where the offer was made.
• ART. 1331

  • In order that mistake will invalidate consent, it should refer to the substance of the thing which is the object of the contract, or to those conditions which havw been principally moved one or both of the parties to enter the contract 
  • Mistake by identity or qualification of one of the contracting parties shall only vitiate consent when it is the principal cause of the contract.
• ART. 1335

  • There is violence when kn order to wrest consent, serious and irresistible force is employed
  • There is initimidation when one of the contracting parties are compelled by reasonable and well-grounded fear of imminent and grave evil upon the people or property, or upon the person or property of the spouse, the descendant or ascendant, to give his consent.
  • To determine the degree of intimidation, the age, sex, and condition of the party shall be borne in mind.
• ART. 1337

  • There is ubdue influence when the other party takes improper advantage of his power over the will of the other party, depriving the latter of a reasonable freedom of choice.
• ART. 1338

  There is fraud when through insidious words or machinations of one of the contracting parties, induced the other party to enter the contract, which without then he would not have agreed to.
• ART. 1350

  • In onerous contracts, the cause shall be understood for each contracting party the promise or prestation of the thing or service by the other; in remunatory contract, the service or benefits remunerated; in contracts of pure benficens, the mear liberality of the benefactor.