Council of State Ruling on Damages Caused by Malpasset Dam Rupture

Extract

[...] Now if the Council of State applies both the regime of responsibility imputed to the victim as a third party and the regime of responsibility compensating the victim as a user, it proceeds to a double indemnification of the prejudice resulting from the rupture of the dam. Ultimately, the Council of State decides to apply the two regimes of responsibility simultaneously. That is to say, it will operate a separation of the damages by distributing the damages of the victim in their capacity as a third party, then the damages of the victim in their capacity as a user of the public service. From then on, it will apply the regime of responsibility to the damage corresponding to the quality of the victim. [...]

[...] More recently, the Dalloz legal lexicon has defined a public work as jurisprudential qualification allowing the application of public law rules protecting individuals and the property in question, applied to immovable property allocated to a public service and which, in the majority of cases, constitute dependencies of the public domain of public persons generally deriving their origin from the carrying out of public works', this definition takes up the one that was raised by the Époux Béligaud opinion rendered on 29 April 2010 by the Council of State. In this case, the opinion results from damage caused by the flooding following the collapse of the Malpasset dam in the Var. The dam collapsed and flooded the town of Fréjus below, consequently flooding homes. [...]

[...] II. The impact of the double quality of the victim on the indemnification of the damage In the measure that the Council of State applies for the first time a double quality, it may seem coherent to apply a double application of the legal regimes or to choose one of the two. The Council of State decides for a simultaneous application of two distinct legal regimes and decides to distinguish the damages in order to avoid a double indemnification A. [...]

[...] This is the innovative character of the ruling: the Council of State attributes a double quality to a single and same person. This is the first time that the jurisprudence recognizes to the same person both the quality of victim and at the same time the quality of a third party A. The imputation of the quality of user to the victim First, the Council of State recalls the situation prior to the occurrence of the damage. It recalls that the Malpasset dam was a public works facility that supplied water to the commune of Fréjus. [...]

[...] This flooding led to a claim for compensation for damages and interest for the damage caused in the town of Fréjus by the town. Thus, the town of Fréjus seized the Nice administrative court and on 13 June 1968 requested the Council of State to annul the judgment handed down by the administrative court and requested the Council of State to condemn the Var department to compensate for damages and interest caused to the town by the collapse of the dam as a public work. [...]