Short answer. Yes. Article 2148 makes an officious manager answer even for a fortuitous loss if he was manifestly unfit to carry on the management. The one relief is where he stepped in to save the property or business from imminent danger — a rescuer is not held to the same standard as someone who merely took over.
What the law says
the officious manager shall be liable for fortuitous events: (1) If he is manifestly unfit to carry on the management
Civil Code, Article 2148 — Further Fortuitous-Event Liability. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Except when the management was assumed to save property or business from imminent danger
Civil Code, Article 2148 — Further Fortuitous-Event Liability. Read the full provision →
An accident normally excuses — but not here
The general rule is that no one bears a loss caused by a fortuitous event, an accident no care could have prevented. Article 2148 removes that shelter from a particular kind of officious manager. It provides that the officious manager shall be liable for fortuitous events: (1) If he is manifestly unfit to carry on the management. The unfit manager pays for the accidental loss as though he had caused it, because the law treats his having taken on a task plainly beyond him as the real reason the property was exposed when the event struck.
What 'manifestly unfit' means
The word doing the work is manifestly. It is not enough that, with hindsight, someone more capable existed; the manager's unsuitability must have been evident — a clear mismatch between what the affair required and what he could bring to it. A person with no idea how to run a going concern who nonetheless takes the reins of one, or who assumes charge of specialised property he plainly cannot handle, falls within it. Ordinary imperfection does not; the ground targets the manager whose lack of the basic competence the task demanded was obvious from the outset.
The rescue exception
The article opens with a carve-out that governs the whole rule: except when the management was assumed to save property or business from imminent danger. Someone who intervenes in a genuine emergency to prevent an imminent loss is not judged by the fitness standard the rest of the article imposes. The law does not want the threat of liability for accidents to deter people from stepping in to save property in peril, so a rescuer who acted in the crisis is spared, even if a calmer moment would have found a better-qualified person to act.
Why fitness is assessed at the start
The practical point is that this liability is decided by the situation at the moment of intervention, not by how things turned out. A manager who was plainly out of his depth does not escape merely because the loss was, in the end, an act of God; his unfitness supplies the fault the law needs. Anyone minded to take over another's property or business unasked should ask honestly whether he is equipped for it, and, outside a real emergency, leave an affair that clearly needs a competent hand to someone who has one — rather than assume an accident will absolve him.