Civil liability for the legal person?s own act

• Author: Madalina Amalia Pasca
• Position: Lawyer
• Pages: 202-208

CIVIL LIABILITY FOR THE LEGAL PERSON’S OWN ACT

Mădălina - Amalia Paşca

Lawyer

madalina.pasca @yahoo.com

Abstract: In order to offer a better protection to the victim, the legislator established

besides the natural person’s responsibility also the responsibility of the legal person. This article

presents in general, the elements of the civil liability with reference to some points of

differentiation from the legislation of the other European countries and in particular, the civil

liability of the legal person in terms of Romanian law.

Because of the increased number of the illegal acts committed by people who end in causing

damages to the others, the civil tort liability is very often seen in the juridical practice. Therefore,

anyone who commits an act that causes to another person a damage is obligated to repair that

damage. This is also the obligation of the legal person, which through its authorities may cause

prejudices to other persons. Every victim has the right to faire compensation, as the judge

considers in each particular case.

Key words: civil tort liability, legal person, illegal act, damages

Civil liability for the legal person’s own act

The legal liability is a historical, alive institution which has been formed in civil societies

along time. Though juridical, it is far away from the total separation of the moral influence, since at

its foundation lies the idea of guilt (mistake). The word liability has a total different meaning in the

jurisprudence than in the every day language, that is: it emphasizes the negative consequences

occurred after committing illegal acts by a natural or a legal person.

The civil liability institution has a historical feature and despite the use of the same notion it

has been given by different societies, its content is different from one society to the other, the final

form it has today is the result of an evolution, of a continuous change, labelled by qualitative

changes. Thus, from the primitive stage of the private liability has been reached, through a long

evolution, at the nowadays meaning, which is characterized by a general rule and not by an

enumeration of cases as it has been in the past.

To the form it shows today, the idea and the institution of the liability have known several

stages of development: from the idea of revenge, private revenge to the right of the state to apply

the penalty. By case, the state applied injury or pecuniary penalties and at the request of the victim,

it provided compensation for the damage caused. This evolution is known in the Roman law (The

law of the XIII trays) as well as in the Athenian legislation.

1

In the Roman law, the evolution went from the collective, objective, criminal liability to the

individual, subjective, civil one. The family solidarity has been removed, the focus has been put on

intention rather than on the material causal and the repair has been separated from the penalty of the

guilty.

This evolution has continued in the old French civil law and it has been expressed in the

Napoleon Code from 1804. At the end of the feudal organization “The law of Caragea” (September

1st, 1818) and “Calimach Code” (1817) are revelled in the Roman law, real legal monuments that

settle, such as the legislation of the western Europe, the general principle of the civil liability. The

main source of inspiration of the Calimach Code is the Austrian civil Code and it consecrates a

whole chapter to civil and contractual liability. Here we can find for the first time the idea of

liability for one’s own act.

Along the historical evolution we reach the Civil Code from 1864, which establishes the

civil liability in chapter V “About crimes and cvasicrimes” (art. 998-1003), from which art.998 and

1

Constantin Statescu, The civil liabi lity for the act of another person, Scientific and Encyclopedic Editing House, 1984,

p.11