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No. 2 (152) (2002)
Artykuły

Odpowiedzialność sprawcy szkody niemajątkowej na podstawie art. 448 k.c.

[Liability of the perpetrator of non-material damage under Article 448 of the Civil Code]

  • Paweł Granecki

Published 2002-06-30

Keywords

  • personal rights,
  • injury,
  • remedy,
  • tortious liability,
  • breach of the law
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Odpowiedzialność sprawcy szkody niemajątkowej na podstawie art. 448 k.c.: [Liability of the perpetrator of non-material damage under Article 448 of the Civil Code]. (2002). Studia Prawnicze The Legal Studies, 2 (152), 83-115. https://doi.org/10.37232/sp.2002.2.5

Abstract

The amendment to Article 448 excludes, in my view, the possibility of cumulation of claims under Articles 445 and 448 of the Civil Code. The compensatory function of the provisions in question comes to the fore here.

Based on the wording of Article 77 of the Constitution, it is necessary to advocate a model of personal property protection based on the premise of unlawfulness as a condition for the attribution of liability for the violation of personal property by the State and, moreover, to treat this norm as a certain postulate for a change in the principles of liability for the violation of personal property in general. Since the constitution equates entities according to the criterion of ownership, this one could be seen as contradictory to the constitution, which holds State-owned entities more severely liable than non-public entities. The phenomenon of the expansion of theories assuming the objectivisation of civil liability and thus making it independent of the perpetrator's fault, with the 'complicity' of the development of insurance institutions, allows one to put forward a thesis that the whole edifice of liability for damages will, in the future, be based on the model of liability from Article 77 of the Constitution. I consider liability for infringement of personal rights to be a manifestation of this generally occurring trend.

The need to objectivise the liability of legal persons should also apply to the liability of the State Treasury for damage caused outside the scope of the imperium; this is rooted in the constitutional equation of subjects according to the ownership criterion.

The law must never place the pecuniary interest over the non-pecuniary and personal one. This is due to the principles of comity. The fact that the perpetrator of the pecuniary damage is not responsible for it should absolutely not absolve the obligation to pay for the non-pecuniary damage, of course under the premise of the unlawfulness of his action. A good example of the relationship between personal rights and property rights is Article 142 of the Civil Code, which places property, i.e. the fullest property right, below the rights associated with the human being. It is unreasonable to differentiate between the strength of the protection of personal rights in its non-property and property aspects. Such a situation was justified before the amendment of Article 448, when the violation of goods was not treated (with the exception of those listed in Article 445) as a basis for the victim to claim punitive damages.

An action for non-pecuniary damage cannot be based on Article 448 if it relates to bodily injury or disorder of health. The exclusive basis for such claims is Article 445 of the Civil Code. Otherwise, the latter provision would have to be regarded as superfluous, which contradicts the assumption of a rational legislator. Personal property is not an internally homogeneous category and is subject to value based on its place in social life. ‘Inferior goods’ are protected by Article 448.

Liability under Article 445 of CC is also based on the premise of unlawfulness of the violation of bodily or sexual integrity or the right to liberty. Indeed, the provisions of the section on torts do not contain thematically homogeneous norms and, in view of the amendment of Article 448, it is unacceptable to maintain Article 445 without abandoning the existing understanding of the norms contained in this provision. The provisions in question, Articles 445 and 448, are among the provisions that regulate the conditions to which compensation for damage is to correspond, being a development of the relevant provisions of Articles 24 and 361 of the Civil Code, rather than Article 415.

The nature of liability remained the same even after the amendment of the Civil Code. This position is not only a consequence of the fact that causal liability is the basic model contained in the Civil Code. The causal liability under Article 448 of the Civil Code is rooted in the extremely close connection between liability under this provision and Article 24 of the Civil Code, which provides for the liability of the perpetrator of the infringement of a personal good.

The differences between capacity in tort and capacity in respect of infringement of personal rights are so significant (in connection with the wording of Article 24 § 1 of CC) that the liability of a legal person should be limited to cases of causal liability for an own act. Otherwise, the subordinate himself - the perpetrator of the violation of personal rights and non-pecuniary damage - will be liable for the violation of personal rights by a person, e.g. subject to the management of a legal entity. An assumption to the contrary would be overly repressive towards legal persons, which are an internally heterogeneous category and thus not always capable of bearing the risk of strict liability. Personal rights are only capable of being infringed by persons: legal and natural. On the other hand, according to the current theory of representation, only the behaviour of the corporate bodies (natural persons acting as an corporate body) is deemed to be the behaviour of the legal person itself. Thus, without denying the causal nature of liability under Article 448 of CC, a practical guideline is obtained in cases where the defendant for punitive damages is a legal person.

The provision of Article 448 of CC refers explicitly to the trial, specifically to the adjudication of the obligation to compensate for damage. This is because strict proof of the amount of non-pecuniary damage is precluded by the intangible nature of the damage itself. The construction of an adequate causal relationship does not, in my opinion, contradict the assumption of the perpetrator's risk as to the specific characteristics of the injured party, and indeed it could be argued that the perpetrator would be held more severely liable, as there would be an undoubtedly adequate link between his conduct and the damage. This is because the normal consequence of kicking a man with fragile bones is a broken bone. These considerations, which are mainly valid in relation to Article 445 of the Civil Code, will not apply to the protection of legal persons, which by their nature do not have specific features modifying the liability of the perpetrator.

In order for the right to punitive damages to arise, it is necessary that the infringement of personal rights has caused non-pecuniary damage. There is no presumption of non-pecuniary damage in the above regard. The claimant must prove the existence of the injury and its amount. As this is often not possible, the Code leaves the court some leeway in the form of being able to award an appropriate amount. This means that the court will take into account all the circumstances of the case and then decide on the amount of punitive damages.

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