National Court Practice and European Tort Law II

This project shall collect, analyze and structure the entire body of case law from all over Europe on the issue of damage. This complex comparative study shall not only offer guidance for researching current cross-border cases, but allow a discussion of upcoming projects on the harmonisation of European tort laws on the basis of real-life case settings. The various national legal systems offer quite a broad range of replies to the question what exactly can be regarded as the loss a person sustained. The "European Group on Tort Law" has therefore published "Principles of European Tort Law", which shall be a systematic collection of basic rules that can serve as a model for the future harmonization of these manifold European tort law systems, which is already highly debated throughout Europe. Since those "Principles" are founded upon a thorough examination of all existing legal systems, the rules shall be acceptable to all jurisdictions for a smooth transition to a harmonized system. This work of the "European Group on Tort Law" has already led to a series of well-received publications with Kluwer Law International publishers. The Group presented the "Principles" in a public conference in May 2005 in Vienna. With a new common European law of torts, however, the broad range of experience derived from extensive court practice on the basis of prior law will no longer be of equal use as before. The proposed project shall help to overcome such downsides: Court decisions from almost thirty European jurisdictions will be systematically selected in order to cover a broad range of central aspects of tort law. These cases will be analyzed and commented both from a national as well as a comparative perspective. Furthermore, the impact of these rulings on the future European law of torts will be highlighted. Finally, each case will be solved on the basis of these new rules in order to provide both academics and practitioners with an analytically structured body of case law derived from a comparative analysis of international court practice. The project will therefore build a bridge from prior national case law to the new body of uniform tort law, which shall aid to extend the continuity of legal development in Europe. Eventually, the results of this study will be published in an online database. The proposed project shall continue the precedent project on causation and cover another key element of tortious law - damage: Not even the question what is actually the harm sustained by a person is answered as unanimously as one might expect. The results of this follow-up project and the experience gained thereby shall serve as a fruitful basis for future follow-up projects on further key elements of tort law.

This project shall collect, analyze and structure the entire body of case law from all over Europe on the issue of damage. This complex comparative study shall not only offer guidance for researching current cross-border cases, but allow a discussion of upcoming projects on the harmonisation of European tort laws on the basis of real-life case settings. The various national legal systems offer quite a broad range of replies to the question what exactly can be regarded as the loss a person sustained. The "European Group on Tort Law" has therefore published "Principles of European Tort Law", which shall be a systematic collection of basic rules that can serve as a model for the future harmonization of these manifold European tort law systems, which is already highly debated throughout Europe. Since those "Principles" are founded upon a thorough examination of all existing legal systems, the rules shall be acceptable to all jurisdictions for a smooth transition to a harmonized system. This work of the "European Group on Tort Law" has already led to a series of well-received publications with Kluwer Law International publishers. The Group presented the "Principles" in a public conference in May 2005 in Vienna. With a new common European law of torts, however, the broad range of experience derived from extensive court practice on the basis of prior law will no longer be of equal use as before. The proposed project shall help to overcome such downsides: Court decisions from almost thirty European jurisdictions will be systematically selected in order to cover a broad range of central aspects of tort law. These cases will be analyzed and commented both from a national as well as a comparative perspective. Furthermore, the impact of these rulings on the future European law of torts will be highlighted. Finally, each case will be solved on the basis of these new rules in order to provide both academics and practitioners with an analytically structured body of case law derived from a comparative analysis of international court practice. The project will therefore build a bridge from prior national case law to the new body of uniform tort law, which shall aid to extend the continuity of legal development in Europe. Eventually, the results of this study will be published in an online database. The proposed project shall continue the precedent project on causation and cover another key element of tortious law - damage: Not even the question what is actually the harm sustained by a person is answered as unanimously as one might expect. The results of this follow-up project and the experience gained thereby shall serve as a fruitful basis for future follow-up projects on further key elements of tort law.