'Legally Relevant Damage' and a Priori Limits to Non-Contractual Liability in the DCFR

Abstract

Most of the draft CFR (DCFR) concerns contract law, yet in Book VI the DCFR deals with another major component of private law which could not be ignored in the work of the Economic Impact Group (EIG). What the DCFR accurately if dryly defines as "noncontractual liability arising out of damage caused to another" roughly corresponds to tort law as it is known in common law systems, or the law of delict (responsabilite civile delictuelle, Haftungsrecht), a sub-part of the law of obligations in civil law systems. This contribution is the only one to deal solely with Book VI DCFR,1 and accordingly it cannot cover every interesting feature of that book. Rather, this contribution focuses on one central aspect of the law of non-contractual liability, namely the general limitations on the scope of non-contractual liability. After a preliminary discussion on the idea of limiting liability (1), this contribution then answers the two issues which are central to the work of the EIG, namely whether there is a need for unification or harmonization of the law on this issue (2) and whether the substantive solution retained in the DCFR is optimal from a law and economics perspective (3).