Table of Contents

CHAPTER III – OF THE LETTING OUT OF LABOUR OR INDUSTRY

Art. 55. Labour may be let out in three ways:
1st. Labourers may hire their services to another person;
2dly. Carriers and watermen hire out their services for the conveyance either of persons or of goods and merchaudizes;
3dly. Workmen hire out their labour or industry to make buildings or other works.

 

SECTION I – OF THE HIRING OF SERVANTS AND WORKMEN

Art. 56. A man can only hire out his services for a certain limited time or for the performance of a certain enterprise.

Art. 57. A man is at liberty to dismiss a hired servant attached to his person or family, without assigning any reason for so doing. The servant is also free to depart without assigning any cause.

Art. 58. Labourers who hire themselves out to serve on plantations or to work in manufactures, have not the right of leaving the person who has hired them, nor can they be sent away by the proprietor, until the time has expired during which they had agreed to serve, unless good and just causes can be assigned.

Art. 59. If, without any just ground of complaint, a man should send away a labourer whose services he has hired for a certain time, before that time has expired, he shall be bound to pay said labourer, the whole of the salaries which he would have been entitled to receive, had the full term of his services arrived, whether said labourer was hired by the month or by the year.

Art. 60. But if, on the other hand, a labourer, after having hired out his services, should leave his employer, before the time of his engagement has expired, without having any just cause of complaint against said employer, the labourer shall then forfeit all the wages that may be due to him and shall moreover be compelled to repay all the money he may have received either as due for his wages in advance thereof on the running year or on the time of his engagement.

 

SECTION II – OF CARRIERS AND WATERMEN

Art. 61. Carriers and watermen are subject, with respect to the safe keeping and preservation of the things entrusted to them, to the same obligations and duties which are imposed on tavern-keepers in the title of deposit and sequestration.

Art. 62. The price of passage agreed for be paid by a woman, for going by sea from one country to another, shall not be increased, in case the woman has a child during the voyage, whether her pregnancy was known or not by the master of the ship.

Art. 63. Carriers and watermen may be liable to the loss for damage of the things entrusted to their care unless they can prove that such loss or damage has been occasioned by accidental and uncontrolable events.

Art. 64. Persons hiring out carriages, and masters of ships and boats, are also subject to peculiar regulations which have the force of law between them and the parties with whom they transact.

 

SECTION III – OF PLOTS FOR BUILDINGS AND OTHER WORKS

Art. 65. To build by a plot or to work by the job, is to undertake a building or a work for a certain stipulated price.

Art. 66. A person who undertakes to make a work, may agree either to furnish his work and industry alone, or to furnish also the materials necessary for such a work.

Art. 67. When the undertaker furnishes the materials for the work, if said work be destroyed in whatever manner it may happen, previous to its being delivered to the owner, the loss shall be sustained by the undertaker, unless the said proprietor be in default for not receiving it, though duly notified to do so.

Art. 68. When the undertaker only furnishes his work and industry, should the thing be destroyed, the undertaker is only liable, in case the loss has been occasioned by his fault.

Art. 69. In the case mentioned in the preceding article, if the thing mentioned is destroyed  by accident and not owing to any fault of the undertaker, before the same be delivered and the owner be in default for not receiving it, the undertaker shall not be entitled to his salaries, unless the destruction be owing to the badness of the materials used in the building.

Art. 70. If the work is composed of detached pieces or made at the rate of so much a measure, it may be delivered separately and that delivery shall be presumed to have taken place, if the proprietor has paid to the undertaker, the price due for the parts of the work which have already been completed.

Art. 71. If a building which an architect or other workman has undertaken to make by the job, should fall to ruin either in whole or in part, on account of the badness of the workmanship, the said architect or undertaker shall bear the loss, if the building falls to ruin in the course of ten years, if it be a stone or brick building and of five years if it be built in wood or with frames filled with bricks.

Art. 72. When an architect or other workman has undertaken the building of a house by the job, according to a plat agreed on between said architect and the proprietor of the ground, he cannot claim an increase of the price agreed on, on the plea of the original plat having been changed and extended, unless he can prove that such changes have been made in compliance with the wishes of the proprietor.

Art. 73. The proprietor has the right to cancel at pleasure the bargain he has made, even in case the work has already been commenced, by compensating the undertaker for all the trouble and expences he has been at, as well as for the profits he would have made, had the work been suffered to proceed.

Art. 74. Contracts for hiring out work, are cancelled by the death of the workman, architect or undertaker, unless the proprietor should consent that the work should be continued by the heir or heirs of the architect, or by workmen employed for that purpose, by said heir or heirs.

Art. 75. The proprietor is only bound, in the former case, to pay to the heirs of said undertaker, the value of the work that has already been done and that of the materials already prepared, proportionably to the price agreed on, in case said work and materials may be useful to him.

Art. 76. The undertaker is responsible for the deeds of the persons employed by him.

Art. 77. If an undertaker fails to do the work he has contracted for, or if he does not execute it in the manner and at the time he has agreed to do it, he shall be liable to pay all the losses that may ensue from his non compliance with his contract.

Art. 78. The masons, carpenters and other workmen who have been employed in the construction of a building or other works undertaken by the job, have their action against the proprietor of the house on which they have worked, only for the sum which may be due by him to the undertaker at the time their action is commenced.

Art. 79. Masons, carpenters, black smiths and all other artificers who undertake work by the job, are bound by the provisions contained in the present section, for they may be considered as undertakers each in his particular line of business.




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