Considerations on a new civil liability solution

Abstract

In search of a new position of justice in matters of civil liability, Professor Ernesto Cordeiro Alvarez has once again presented the criterion he advocated in the First National Congress of Civil Law, held in 1927. "Hacia una nueva solución en materia de responsabilidad civil" is the title of his essay, published in the Boletín del Instituto de Derecho Civil (Year VII, W. 2-3). The aim he pursues, to limit the consequences to be remedied, is undoubtedly a reasonable and firm aspiration compared to the traditional one of the French Code, confirmed by that of the German law of the nineteenth century. The author proposes that the French formula that ''anyone who through his fault causes damage to another must repair it'' be replaced by another, more subjectivist formula that, seeking the punishment of the perpetrator of the act, distinguishes the cases in which there is malice from those in which there is only fault.