European Tort Law

In every society Tort Law plays a crucial role in the actual life of the legal system and of the people using it. Whenever relationships between individuals do not converge towards a contract nor are absorbed by property law, then comes the time for tort law rules to provide justice. The goal of comparative research in the law of torts is to clarify diversities and similarities amidst the operative rules of the various legal systems. The need is to go beyond statutory formulas, since in the field of torts, even more than in other areas, the "law" is made by judicial decisions, by the beliefs that underpin these decisions, by insurance practices which affect the allocation of the costs ensuing risks and damages.

This comparative analysis calls for an effort which is more and more urgent to the management of private conflicts in a "globalized" world. But this is especially true in Europe, at the dawn of a new era characterized by the enlargement/enrichment of the EU.

The issues arising from the infliction of "pure economic" losses, thereby affecting nothing else than the patrimonial sphere of the victim, is in this perspective a very useful case-study to test solutions given to problems, which not only straddle the opaque frontier between contract and tort, but also involve the day-to-day life of your average person, whether s/he be an investor or not, whether s/he be Eastern or Western European.

The volume orginates from an international conference that took place in April, 2004 in Trieste, Italy.