National Court Practice and European Tort Law
In cooperation with the Research Unit for European Tort Law, the Institute is continuing forward with the analysis it first commenced in 2003 examining national court practice on tort law within the European Union. Already in existence and subject to ongoing development, the model rules drafted with the aim of legal harmonisation (Unidroit Principles, Principles of European Contract Law) lack a connection to court practice. Although existing legal rules may indeed have been analysed comparatively as part of the process of drafting model laws, their relation to national court practice was not sufficiently emphasized, thus potentially impeding the acceptance of the new rules. A further obstacle may be that practitioners seeking to apply the Principles cannot access any relevant practice or jurisprudence beyond what is provided in the commentaries and illustrations.This project shall produce a collection and comparative survey of the most influential decisions of national courts in Europe addressing the core questions of tort law. The connections between the drafted principles on compensation for damage and national tort law including court practice will be elaborated upon and the underlying common European doctrine will be described and analysed.
An initial part of the project looks at how courts deal with causation. In addition to Reinhard Zimmermann the project is coordinated by Helmut Koziol (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Bernhard A. Koch (University of Innsbruck) and Bénédict Wininger (University of Geneva).