The 'Restrictive' Nature of Civil Liability for the Acts of Minors or those under Judicial Interdiction

• Author: Mirela Costache
• Pages: 301-306

Legal Sciences in the New Millennium

301

The “Restrictive” Nature of Civil Liability for the Acts of Minors or those

under Judicial Interdiction

Mirela Costache1

Abstract: In this study we propose a rigorous analysis of article 1372 of the Civil Code, concerning the nature

of vicarious tort liability, focusing on the limited situations of implementing those provisions of civil law.

Also, we will relate to previous regulation, subjecting the analysis accuracy with which the current legislator

has accurately regulated only two of the three ph ases of the vicarious tort liability, being current until October

2011. The review will only regard the first o f the two forms, and namely, the liability for the prejudice caused

by the act of a minor or a person under judicial interdiction. From th e analysis and interpretation of th e three

paragraphs of article 1372 we will identify the restrictive nature in applying this form of liability, in the strict

interpretation of the described situations.

Keywords: tort; minor; parent; academic staff; student

1. Introduction

Everyone, as subject of civil law enjoys, under the law, the plenitude of its civil subjective rights, with

the correlative obligation of not causing harm to his fellow men that would justly indebted to an

adequate reparation, attracting the activation of tort liability.

The experience of social life has imposed in civil law matter the diversification of liability hypothesis:

the one for his own act and liability for the acts of another person, both cases having as declared

purpose protecting the interests of victims and repairing the prejudice (Stătescu, 2009, p. 2). So, the

tort can be committed not only in the task of the one causing the prejudice, but also the responsibility

of others, the current Civil Code establishing, increasingly restrictive, two such forms within the

articles 1372-1374 of the Civil Code, compared to the three existing ones, until recently. At first

glance, from reading these texts it is easy to perceive that the two forms have principled and

restrictive feature, from the nature of their writing. It is about the liability for the prejudice caused to

another person by the act of a minor or a person under judicial interdiction and principals liability for

the infringements caused by the agents, renouncing to the liability of the teachers and artisans for the

acts of students and apprentices under their supervision.

Why only on these two situations? We identify in this study the following theoretical trajectory and

legislative interpretation:

1 Senior Lecturer, PhD, Faculty of Law, “Danubius” University of Galati, Romania, Address: 3 Galati Boulevard, 800654

Galati, Romania, Tel.: +40.372.361.102, fax: +40.372.361.290, Corresponding author: mirelacostache@univ-danubius.ro.