1) The Text and Placement in the Civil Code

Article 23 (Civil Code of the Philippines) provides:

“Even when an act or event causing damage to another’s property was not due to the fault or negligence of the defendant, the latter shall be liable for indemnity if through the act or event he was benefited.”

Article 23 appears in the Civil Code’s early provisions on Human Relations (Book I). Those provisions function as a broad normative framework: they supply baseline standards of fairness and social justice that influence private law relations, particularly where the strict rules of contracts, quasi-delicts, property, or other sources of obligations do not neatly address an inequity.

Article 23 is one of the Code’s clearest statements of a restitutionary principle: a person who becomes richer because another suffers loss should not, in fairness, keep the benefit without paying for it, even if the enrichment did not arise from wrongdoing.

2) Core Concept: Liability Without Fault Based on Benefit

A. What Article 23 Does

Article 23 creates a form of obligation that is not anchored on fault, negligence, or intent. It addresses cases where:

Damage occurred to another’s property, and
The damaging act/event was not due to the defendant’s fault or negligence, but
The defendant was benefited by that same act/event.

In that situation, the defendant must indemnify (pay compensation), but the rationale is not punishment for wrongdoing—it is restoration of fairness by returning the value of the unjust gain.

B. What Article 23 Is Not

Article 23 is not the usual liability for quasi-delict (tort) under Article 2176 (which requires fault or negligence). It also is not damages for breach of contract (which depends on contractual obligations). Instead, it fits most naturally under the umbrella of unjust enrichment / restitution principles in Philippine civil law.

3) Legal Nature and Doctrinal Home: Unjust Enrichment in Philippine Law

Philippine law recognizes a general principle that no one should unjustly enrich himself at the expense of another. Article 23 operationalizes that principle in a specific scenario: property damage caused without defendant’s fault, but resulting in defendant’s benefit.

In practice, courts and lawyers treat Article 23 as part of the Civil Code’s larger set of equitable remedies and restitution-based obligations—where the system imposes an obligation to return or pay for a benefit that would otherwise be unfair to retain.

Think of Article 23 as speaking the language of equity, not the language of culpability.

4) Elements for Application

A workable analytical structure for Article 23 generally includes:

Damage to another’s property
- The injury must be to property (not purely moral injury or physical injury to a person, although related harms may exist).
No fault or negligence on the defendant’s part
- The event must be not attributable to the defendant’s culpa.
- If the defendant is negligent, the case typically shifts toward quasi-delict or other fault-based liability.
Benefit to the defendant
- The defendant must have obtained a measurable advantage (economic or material gain, or avoided loss) because of the act/event that caused the damage.
Causal connection between the damage-causing act/event and the defendant’s benefit
- The enrichment must be linked to the loss-producing event—not a remote or incidental improvement unrelated to the damage.
Indemnity commensurate to the benefit
- Liability tends to be limited by the extent of benefit received, consistent with restitutionary logic.

5) The Meaning of “Act or Event” and “Not Due to Fault”

A. “Act or Event”

Article 23 covers both:

Acts (human conduct that is not negligent or wrongful), and
Events (occurrences not caused by the defendant’s fault—e.g., accidents, natural events, unforeseen incidents).

This breadth matters in Philippine conditions where property damage may arise from typhoons, flooding, fires spreading, infrastructure failures, or other events not easily pinned on a specific wrongdoer—yet sometimes someone gains from the outcome.

B. “Not Due to Fault or Negligence”

This phrase narrows Article 23 to the non-culpable sphere. If the defendant is at fault, the law ordinarily uses:

Quasi-delict (fault-based tort),
Contract (breach),
Crime (civil liability ex delicto), or
Special laws imposing liability.

Article 23 is most relevant where the defendant says, “It wasn’t my fault,” and that claim is true, but the defendant nonetheless ends up profiting from the damaging occurrence.

6) The Idea of “Benefit”: What Counts, What Doesn’t

A. What Counts as Benefit

“Benefit” under Article 23 is best understood broadly as enrichment—a gain or advantage that is economically appreciable. Examples in principle:

Receiving property or part of it as a result of the event
Saving expenses (e.g., avoiding a cost because someone else’s property was destroyed or removed)
Increasing property value due to the removal/destruction of another’s property (where the increase is directly linked to the event)

The gain can be positive (more assets) or negative (less liability/expense).

B. What Likely Does Not Count

A purely sentimental or speculative advantage
A benefit that is too indirect, remote, or coincidental
A benefit unrelated to the damaging act/event

The key is a fairness-based link: the defendant’s enrichment should be traceable to the same occurrence that produced the claimant’s property loss.

7) Measure of Indemnity: Restitution, Not Full Tort Damages

A crucial interpretive point: because Article 23 is restitutionary, indemnity is typically oriented to the defendant’s benefit, not necessarily the plaintiff’s entire loss.

If the plaintiff’s loss is ₱500,000, but the defendant’s benefit is only ₱50,000, a restitution-based approach points toward ₱50,000 (or the equivalent value) as the equitable indemnity.
If the defendant’s benefit is ₱500,000 and the plaintiff’s loss is ₱500,000, indemnity may align with the full value.

This approach avoids transforming Article 23 into a strict-liability tort rule. Its moral center is: “Return what you gained unfairly,” not “Pay all consequences regardless of fault.”

That said, how courts quantify can vary with facts (e.g., valuation disputes, offsets, improvements, partial gains, and proof issues).

8) Relationship to Other Civil Code Remedies

A. Distinction from Quasi-Delict (Article 2176)

Quasi-delict requires fault/negligence and compensates damage caused by that fault.
Article 23 does not require fault; it compels restitution when the defendant benefits from a loss-causing act/event.

B. Relationship to Solutio Indebiti and Other Quasi-Contracts

Philippine civil law has “quasi-contract” concepts (e.g., payment by mistake) grounded in preventing unjust enrichment. Article 23 shares the same moral logic but is triggered by property damage leading to enrichment.

C. Relationship to Abuse of Rights / Human Relations Provisions

The Human Relations chapter includes provisions against abuse of rights and conduct contrary to morals, good customs, or public policy. Article 23 is less about misconduct and more about equitable adjustment—but it belongs to the same policy family: preventing unfairness in private relations.

9) Typical Philippine Context Scenarios (Illustrative)

These are illustrative patterns showing how Article 23 reasoning may be invoked in Philippine disputes:

Scenario 1: Accidental diversion benefiting another property

A flood or accident alters a boundary feature (e.g., a makeshift dike breaks), damaging one parcel’s improvements but channeling water away from another parcel, preventing damage and saving costs. If the benefiting landowner’s advantage is directly tied to the damaging event and is measurable, Article 23 logic may be raised to claim indemnity to the extent of the benefit.

Scenario 2: Non-negligent event causing loss but creating salvage gain

A fire spreads without negligence attributable to a person, destroying a neighbor’s stored materials; another person ends up using recoverable debris or salvaged usable materials for construction, producing value. If the gain is traceable to the destructive event, Article 23’s restitution principle may support reimbursement.

Scenario 3: Necessary action without fault that incidentally benefits the actor

A person lawfully performs an act (without negligence) to protect his own property (e.g., emergency measure), but the measure results in damage to another’s property while producing a calculable advantage to the actor (e.g., materials recovered, costs avoided). Article 23 may be invoked to prevent retention of the advantage without indemnity.

These examples highlight the key: no fault, but enrichment connected to another’s property loss.

10) Procedural and Evidentiary Considerations

In actual litigation, success under Article 23 often turns on proof:

Proof of property damage
- photographs, receipts, expert appraisal, inventory, title/possession evidence
Proof that the defendant is not at fault (or at least that the claimant is not required to prove fault)
- often arises as the defendant’s defense; if fault is shown, the case may proceed under different provisions
Proof of benefit
- this is often the hardest: the claimant must identify and quantify the enrichment
- financial records, valuation reports, comparative cost analyses, testimony
Proof of causal link
- showing that the defendant’s benefit resulted from the same act/event that caused the claimant’s loss

Because Article 23 is equity-driven, courts typically demand that the enrichment be clear and not speculative.

11) Defenses and Limitations

A defendant confronted with an Article 23 claim may raise defenses consistent with restitution principles:

No benefit was actually obtained
The alleged benefit is too remote or speculative
The benefit was not caused by the same act/event that caused the damage
The claimant’s loss is real, but the defendant did not gain (or gained nothing measurable)
The benefit has already been returned or compensated through another arrangement
The claimant is invoking Article 23 to bypass a more specific rule that should govern the situation (e.g., a contract allocation of risk)

Additionally, if the facts reveal that the defendant was negligent or at fault, the analysis typically migrates away from Article 23 toward fault-based liability, which has its own elements and defenses.

12) Policy Rationale in Philippine Setting

Article 23 reflects two interlocking policies particularly resonant in Philippine private law:

Fairness in social relations
- The Human Relations provisions were designed to temper strict legalism by emphasizing equity and social justice in everyday interactions.
Prevention of unjust enrichment
- In a setting where accidents, natural calamities, and unforeseen events are common, strict fault rules sometimes leave losses where they fall even when someone else gains. Article 23 supplies a corrective lens: benefit derived from another’s loss may generate a duty to indemnify.

The provision also encourages a practical moral norm: one should not profit from a neighbor’s misfortune when the profit is directly produced by the misfortune.

13) Practical Use by Lawyers: How Article 23 Is Pleaded

In practice, a claimant invoking Article 23 will typically:

plead the occurrence (act/event),
describe the property damage,
allege the defendant’s lack of fault is not dispositive because the claim is based on benefit,
identify the benefit obtained, and
demand indemnity measured by the benefit (or by the value unjustly retained).

It is often pleaded in the alternative alongside other causes of action. For example, a complaint may allege negligence (quasi-delict) but also plead Article 23 in case the court finds no fault yet finds enrichment.

14) Key Takeaways

Article 23 imposes indemnity without fault when the defendant benefited from an act/event that damaged another’s property.
It is best understood as a restitutionary / unjust enrichment remedy within the Civil Code’s Human Relations provisions.
The decisive battleground is usually proof and valuation of the benefit and its causal link to the damaging occurrence.
Indemnity is conceptually aimed at the extent of enrichment, not necessarily the claimant’s entire loss.
In Philippine private law, Article 23 serves as an equitable safety net to prevent a windfall at another’s expense even where no one is blameworthy.