Product Liability Law in Egypt: An Overview of Some Civil and Commercial Code Rules

Abstract

Arabic: t zJJI . , .cJtI). More recently, the Egyptian legislature enacted a new Commercial Code, including some significant additional rules on product liability. The Egyptian legal system adjudicates many so-called product liability lawsuits each year. However, experience suggests that such lawsuits do not occur with the same relative frequency as found, for example, in the U.S. legal system. Of course, there are fundamental differences between the U.S. and Egyptian legal systems. The Egyptian legal system (including its judicial structure and procedures, as well as its substantive laws) is largely a civil law system, along the lines of European continental civil law systems. Product liability lawsuits brought before the Egyptian courts involve civil law concepts of contractual and tort liability, with the judge determining both questions of law and assessment of fact-juries are not a feature of the Egyptian judicial system. Similarly, the U.S. legal concept of punitive damages (i.e., awards that exceed a private party's actual damages suffered) does not exist in Egypt, and class action lawsuits are not a prominent feature of the Egyptian judicial system.