What happens to a piece-of-work contract if the owner's materials are lost through a fortuitous event?

The setting: contractor supplies only labour

Article 1718 deals with a specific arrangement: a piece-of-work contract where the contractor undertakes to put in only his work or skill, while the owner supplies the materials. Think of a tailor sewing cloth the customer provides, or an artisan working on the owner's raw material. In that situation, the materials belong to the owner throughout, and the contractor's contribution is his labour. The article sorts out who bears the loss when things go wrong before the finished work is handed over. Its rules are the default the law supplies when the parties have not agreed otherwise, and they can shift depending on delay, on the cause of the loss, and on whether the materials themselves are destroyed.

The basic rule: no pay for work destroyed before delivery

The starting point is hard on the contractor. The article says the contractor cannot claim any compensation if the work should be destroyed before its delivery. If the half-finished piece is destroyed before it is delivered to the owner, the contractor generally goes unpaid for the labour already spent — he bears the risk of his own work until delivery. The logic is that, having promised a finished result, the contractor has not yet performed what he was engaged to deliver. So a destruction that happens in that window, as a rule, falls on him: he loses his effort, and he cannot demand payment for work the owner never received.

The exceptions that shift the loss

That rule has built-in exceptions where the fault or risk lies elsewhere. The contractor can claim compensation if there has been delay in receiving the work — that is, the work was ready but the owner delayed accepting it, so the loss should not fall on the contractor. He may also claim if the destruction was caused by the poor quality of the material, provided this fact was communicated in due time to the owner. Since the owner supplied the material, a loss traceable to its bad quality is the owner's risk — but only if the contractor warned the owner about it in time. A contractor who stayed silent about defective material cannot later rely on this exception.

Loss of the materials extinguishes the contract

The question here is answered by the article's final rule: If the material is lost through a fortuitous event, the contract is extinguished. When the owner's materials themselves are destroyed by an event no one could foresee or prevent — a fire, a flood, and the like — there is nothing left to work on, and the law simply ends the contract. Neither party is treated as in breach: the owner loses his materials, the contractor loses the expected job, and neither can demand performance or, as a rule, damages from the other. What the article does not do is override a contrary agreement or resolve who insured the materials; those can change the practical outcome. Where real money or valuable materials are at stake, the contract terms should be checked with counsel.

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 1718 — Loss Where Contractor Furnished Only Labor