Short answer. Yes, if two conditions are met. Article 2151 says that even where the owner gained nothing and there was no imminent danger, he must still reimburse the officious manager — provided the manager acted in good faith, and the property or business is intact and ready to be returned to the owner.
What the law says
Even though the owner did not derive any benefit and there has been no imminent and manifest danger to the property or business, the owner is liable as under the first paragraph of the preceding article, provided: (1) The officious manager has acted in good faith, and (2) The property or business is intact, ready to be returned to the owner.
Civil Code, Article 2151 — Reimbursement Without Benefit or Danger. Read the full provision →
The gap this article fills
Reimbursement for uninvited management usually rests on one of two hooks: the owner enjoyed an advantage, or the manager acted to avert an imminent and manifest loss. Article 2151 addresses the case where neither is present — no benefit to the owner, no danger headed off. Without a special rule, a good-faith manager who spent his own money on someone else's property could be left with nothing, simply because the effort happened to produce no gain and averted no crisis. The article closes that gap, but on stricter terms than the ordinary case, because the usual justifications for reimbursement are absent.
Condition one: good faith
The first requirement is that the officious manager has acted in good faith. He must have taken on the affair honestly, in the owner's interest rather than his own, and conducted it accordingly. This is what distinguishes the manager the article protects from a meddler or an opportunist. Where there is neither benefit nor danger to justify the intervention on its results, the manager's honest purpose in undertaking it becomes the thing that entitles him to be repaid. A manager who acted in bad faith gets no help from this provision at all.
Condition two: the property is intact
The second requirement is that the property or business is intact, ready to be returned to the owner. The owner must be getting back what was his, whole and available to him. If the property has been damaged, dissipated or is not ready to be handed over, the article does not apply, and the manager cannot lean on it to recover his expenses. The condition reflects a fair exchange: the owner who receives his property back undiminished should shoulder the good-faith manager's proper costs, but he is not asked to pay for a management that left him worse off or empty-handed.
What reimbursement then covers
When both conditions are satisfied, the owner is liable as under the first paragraph of the preceding article — the same measure that governs an owner who did enjoy an advantage. That means the necessary and useful expenses, obligations properly incurred in his interest, and the damages the manager suffered in performing his duties. So the two-part test does not create a lesser remedy; it decides whether the ordinary remedy is available at all in a case where benefit and danger are both missing. A good-faith manager returning intact property should keep his receipts, because they define what he can claim.