Short answer. No. Under Article 1950, a borrower in a commodatum who spends money merely to make use of the thing — over and above the ordinary expenses of use and the extraordinary ones the law separately addresses — cannot claim reimbursement. Borrowing a thing for free means carrying the cost of using it.

What the law says

If, for the purpose of making use of the thing, the bailee incurs expenses other than those referred to in articles 1941 and 1949, he is not entitled to reimbursement.

Civil Code, Article 1950 — Other Expenses Not Reimbursable. Read the full provision →

The bargain in a free loan

Commodatum is essentially gratuitous: you get the use of someone's thing for nothing. The Civil Code balances that free ride by placing the running costs of that use on the borrower, not the owner. It would be an odd loan indeed if a lender who charged nothing then had to reimburse the borrower for the petrol, the transport, or the operator's time that using the thing required. The starting point, therefore, is that the price of a free loan is that the borrower absorbs what it costs him to actually make use of what he was lent.

What Article 1950 says

The rule is stated in the negative: If, for the purpose of making use of the thing, the bailee incurs expenses other than those referred to in articles 1941 and 1949, he is not entitled to reimbursement. The two cross-references matter. Article 1941 covers the ordinary expenses of using and keeping the thing, which the borrower must shoulder in any event. Article 1949 covers the extraordinary expenses that the Code assigns under their own rules. Everything else a borrower lays out simply to put the thing to use falls outside both, and stays with him.

What counts as an expense of use

Think of the costs you incur because you are the one operating the thing: fuel for a borrowed vehicle, fares to fetch it and bring it back, consumables to run a borrowed machine, an operator's wages, small permits tied to your particular use. None of these preserve or improve the thing itself; they are simply what it costs you to enjoy the loan. Because they are neither the ordinary keeping expenses of Article 1941 nor the extraordinary preservation expenses of Article 1949, Article 1950 denies reimbursement for them, however large the bill turns out to be.

The line worth knowing

The provision does not strip the borrower of every remedy. Extraordinary expenses needed to preserve the thing stand on a different footing and are handled on their own terms, so this rule is not a bar to those. What it forecloses is the everyday cost of use masquerading as a reimbursable outlay. If you expect the owner to cover a particular cost of using the thing, the safe course is to agree that in advance and in writing, because the Code's default is squarely the other way: use it for free, pay for using it yourself.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.