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- Title
Non-Pecuniary Damages in France.
- Authors
Borghetti, Jean-Seébastien
- Abstract
French liability law has always had a very liberal approach towards damage. As a matter of principle, any type of harm can be compensated, and this has resulted in extremely diverse non-pecuniary damages being recognized by the French courts: consequential and ‘stand-alone’ harms; sufferings resulting from the loss of a relative, an animal, or even the environment; violation of legal persons’ non-pecuniary interests; feelings of anxiety linked to the exposure to a risk; wrongful birth and life; and so on. In this respect, French law is very interesting from a comparative perspective, as it seems to be indifferent to the risk of liability law getting out of control and to totally ignore the floodgates argument. The amounts awarded to compensate these various types of non-pecuniary damages are usually rather limited, though, and the lack of official rules on how they should be calculated raises a number of questions. With respect to a possible reform of French liability law, it is suggested that a more restrictive approach to non-pecuniary damages should be adopted, which would include guidelines for judges on how to measure financial compensation.
- Subjects
LEGAL liability; DAMAGES (Law); FRENCH law
- Publication
Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, 2015, Vol 3, Issue 2, p268
- ISSN
2050-4802
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/cjcl/cxv012