Monetary compensation for non-material damage now and then in the perspective of French and Polish legal systems

Abstract

The last decades have witnessed – in civil law jurisdictions – a growing concern about instruments of legal protection of non-material interests, in particular: redressing non-material losses sustained as a result of tortious acts. Legislation and case-law alike try to address this complex problem. The aim of this paper is to present, in a comparative context, the historical development of admissibility of monetary compensation claims for non-material damage in French civil law (the Napoleonic Code) and jurisdictions that have adopted French law or structured their civil law legislation around French paradigms as well as in Polish law. Though the contemporary private law of Poland is far more related to the laws of Germany and Austria, French civil law, which was in force in the territory of Congress Poland for over a century, was and still is an important benchmark for ever-valid comparative analysis. The very broad and liberal way in which contemporary Polish law approaches the issue of compensation for non-property harm seems to be one of the issues where French inspirations played an important role. The authors employ legal comparative and historical methods, supplanted by formal-dogmatic ones, to present the evolution of tort law concerning monetary liability for non-material loss.