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ON THE

LAW OF QUASI-CONTRACTS

BY

EDWIN H. WOODRUFF

PROFESSOR OF LAW IN THE COLLEGE OF LAW
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

INDIANAPOLIS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

1905

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PREFACE.

This volume is intended to contain a representative selection of cases upon the large and important group of legal duties embraced in the term quasi-contract, and to afford material for the study and discussion of the principles regulating recovery in that class of cases, as those principles are found implicated with, and working upon, the actual facts of decided cases. For the historical development of the law of quasi-contracts, the student is referred to the masterly History of Assumpsit, by Professor Ames, which he has kindly permitted to be republished as an appendix to this volume.

The primary division of the work into three parts was determined by the broad classification first given by Professor Ames in his History of Assumpsit, and adopted by Professor Keener in the introductory chapter to his Treatise on Quasi-Contracts. However, by far the greater part of the subject is comprised in Part III, under the general doctrine of "Unjust Enrichment," and the arrangement employed by the present editor for this part, while not the only feasible grouping, will, it is hoped, be practically satisfactory. As Dr. Johnson says in his essay on Pope: "Of two or more positions depending upon some remote or general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why one should precede the other"; and so, while the cases in Part III depend upon the very general principle of "Unjust Enrichment", and while a cogent reason cannot always be given why some of these positions should precede others, nevertheless the special correlation of analogous topics has been the guide. to the present arrangement. It may be added that the only essay at a completely developed classification of the law of quasi-contracts which has thus far been published, is the one offered tentatively by Professor Wigmore, in 25 American Law Review, 695 (1891).

The notes appended to the cases are largely apposite quotations from judicial decisions which in many instances themselves might

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