Efficient cause and contributory fault in non-contractual liability: an analysis of their fundamentals and jurisprudential consequences

Abstract

The Civil Code doesn’t contain a precept that specifically regulates the consequences of the intervention of the victim's fault in a harmful result. The Roman jurists of the Republican period elaborated some notions of non-contractual fault based on the lex Aquilia which are still used by our jurisprudence to specify the consequences of those harmful conducts caused by the fault of the victim. We now propose a jurisprudential analysis of the compensation of fault and of the degradation of the liability derived from the fact caused by the victim.