Section 587: Hire of services, definition
Statutory text (Thai original)
อันว่าจ้างทำของนั้น คือสัญญาซึ่งบุคคลคนหนึ่ง เรียกว่าผู้รับจ้าง ตกลงรับจะทำการงานสิ่งใดสิ่งหนึ่งจนสำเร็จให้แก่บุคคลอีกคนหนึ่ง เรียกว่าผู้ว่าจ้าง และผู้ว่าจ้างตกลงจะให้สินจ้างเพื่อผลสำเร็จแห่งการที่ทำนั้น
Verbatim from the Royal Gazette / Office of the Council of State
English translation
The hire of work is a contract whereby a person, called contractor, agrees to accomplish a definite work for another person, called employer, who agrees to pay him a remuneration of the result of the work.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 587 is part of Book 3 (Specific Contracts) of the Thai Civil and Commercial Code. This entry is awaiting firm-authored commentary; the statutory text above is verbatim from the Office of the Council of State (OCS Krisdika) Thai source, with the English translation from the FAO/UN FAOLEX repository. Always rely on the Thai original for legal proceedings.
Why this matters in practice
For lawyers: contracts for legal representation, advertising, and consulting are typically hire of work; the fee falls due on completion of the specified task, not by time spent. For laypersons: if you hire a contractor to build something and pay on completion, that is hire of work — not employment.
Legislative history
Part of the original Civil and Commercial Code codification; no major subsequent amendment.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 3660/2551 (2008)
A contract for legal representation is a hire of work; the fee is earned on delivery of the defined result (final judgment), not on time spent.
A contract for legal representation is a hire of work under Section 587; the lawyer's fee falls due when the case reaches a final conclusion, and parties may agree on phased payment tied to case outcomes.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 8032/2556 (2013)
A roofing subcontract at a unit rate is hire of work; the contractor may be a 'merchant' attracting the two-year prescription, not the five-year artisan's prescription.
A subcontract to dismantle and extend steel roofing, priced per square metre with the contractor supplying tools, was classified as hire of work under Section 587; the contractor was a 'merchant or industrialist' under Section 193/34(1) and not merely an artisan, so the five-year prescription under Section 193/33(5) did not apply.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 61 Supreme Court decisions (1954 to 2024)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 2033/2567 (2024)
- Decision 857/2567 (2024)
- Decision 3566/2567 (2024)
- Decision 2588/2564 (2021) Interest Rate Amendment — Prospective Application
- Decision 7118/2561 (2018)
- Decision 3149/2560 (2017)
- Decision 11044/2558 (2015)
- Decision 8032/2556 (2013)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Most often cited alongside
- Section 391 10
- Section 575 8
- Section 224 5
- Section 602 5
- Section 7 4
- Section 193/34 4
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Civil and Commercial Code, s. 587 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil and Commercial Code (Thailand), s. 587. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-587/ (accessed 8 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.พ.พ. มาตรา 587 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-587/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-587/"><p>The hire of work is a contract whereby a person, called contractor, agrees to accomplish a definite work for another person, called employer, who agrees to pay him a remuneration of the result of the work.</p><footer>Civil and Commercial Code, s. 587 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-587/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.