Case ID: pr_91/html/0542-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Belaval", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ferdinand Acevedo, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Grand Union de Puerto Rico, S.A., Defendant and Appellee.
    No. R-63-23.
    Decided December 11, 1964.
    
      Francisco Acevedo for appellant. McConnell, Valdés & Kelley and Ramón Moran Loubriel for appellee.
    Division composed of Mr. Justice Belaval, as Chief Judge of Division, Mr. Justice Hernández Matos, and Mr. Justice Santana Becerra.
   Mr. Justice Belaval

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Appellant alleges that he performed certain professional assessment work at the request of defendant-appellee, through an intermediary. The most reasonable inferences from the evidence show that the alleged intermediary in this case, a real-estate broker, procured from appellant the preparation of such work in order to make more attractive an offer of sale which he made to appellee.

We have examined painstakingly the possibility that the conduct of the parties gave rise to an unjust enrichment, but we are convinced that the situation of facts which produces the unjust enrichment in this class of extracontractual relationship — profit by another’s work without pay — is an interested interpretation of certain circumstances rather than a reasonable consequence of the evidence. The inference drawn from the evidence which the accretion of the obligee’s patrimony seeks to establish, juridical basis of the obligation ope legis of the enrichment, is directly contradicted by the latter’s testimony.

For the reasons stated, the judgment rendered by the Superior Court of Puerto Rico, San Juan Part, on January 3, 1963, will be affirmed.