Case:
Bull.civ.. 1978 II no. 271 p. 208 Perret v. Antonnelli
Date:
13 December 1978
Note:
Translated French Cases and Materials under the direction of Professor B. Markesinis and M. le Conseiller Dominique Hascher
Translated by:
Tony Weir
Copyright:
Professor B. S. Markesinis

Given that it emerges from the judgment under attack that Perret was the victim of a traffic accident for which Antonnelli and others have been held liable and that when Mme Perret sued them for compensation for her personal damageher claim was dismissed;

Given that she criticises the judgment on the ground, first, that it presumed, in the absence of any medical document which alone could justify this conclusion,that there was no causal relation between the accident and her husband’simpotence, even though she had properly submitted a medical document pointingto the opposite conclusion, and secondly that it failed to address the sufferingsof a wife now condemned to live beside a husband whose physical and mental disabilitiesprevented his living a normal life, admitted facts from which the court failedto draw the right legal conclusions;

But given on the one hand that the judgment declared that the allegations of Perret’s sexual disabilities were mounted too late in the course of the proceedings and on the other that the physical injuries from which Perret continues to suffer are not such as to be insupportable for a wife to witness; from which it follows that this complaint is not justified;

But in view of article 1382 Code civil;

Given that in dismissing Mme Perret’s claim for her personal harm resulting from her husband’s poor health the court held that although M. Perret could not, despite surgical treatment, get up and walk without crutches, dress and undress or go to the toilet without some help from a third party, the provision of such assistance did not go beyond the duty owed by one spouse to the other and concluded that she had not suffered any personal harm directly resulting from the accident;

But given that in so deciding the court did not draw the proper inferences from the findings it had made regarding the consequences of the accident and thus left its decision without legal basis;

For these reasons QUASHES the decision on this point and remands the case to the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence.

Civ 2, 13 December 1978: Case law maintained. See Civ 2, 12 October 2000, not published, pourvoi no 99-10.126, a solution which confirms the one of 1978, in reaffirming the right of a person whose spouse's state of health has deteriorated to demand "reparation of the detriment which she suffers (...) from a material and non-material burden which exceeds carrying out the duty which spouses have to assist each other, and which was caused by the seriousness of the her husband's state" as well as a judgment of the 12 November 1986 (Civ 2, Bull no 164: "Article 1382 of the Code civil is violated by a judgment which, in refusing the spouse of a road traffic victim her claim seeking reparation of harm suffered by her arising from the state of the victim, states on the one hand that it did not appear that the criteria for exceptional non-material detriment in relation to the victim's spouse were satisfied; and on the other hand that the difficulties of existence indicated by the spouse in her daily life cannot be considered as exceeding in a significant manner those which can be overcome without too much effort and discomfort by the duty of assistance between spouses and the emotional ties which unite them. All the claimant had to prove was personal, direct and certain detriment" (see again Civ 2, 18 March 1981, Bull no 70). This principle seemed to have been adopted previously in the judgment of 1978 in support, it is true, of the opposite result refusing, in this same type of case, indemnification of a spouse because of lack of "non-material and material harm which is sufficiently serious to constitute direct detriment giving her the right to personal reparation".

Translation by Raymond Youngs

 

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