Force majeure, railway liability, SNCF, unpredictability, irresistibility, third party fault, causal link, guardian of thing, liability exemption
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Abstract
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Abstract
Analysis of a court judgment regarding the liability of SNCF in a railway accident, examining the concept of force majeure and its implications.
Extract
[...] ) because the SNCF was not the owner of the platforms', making allusion to the characterization of the unpredictability of force majeure. The Court seems to use a proportionality criterion to evaluate the character of unpredictability by assessing on the one hand, the existence of human or material means capable of preventing the occurrence of the event and then, the feasibility of implementing these different means. In this balance, the disproportionality between one and the other of its elements will allow the characterization of unpredictability and consequently, force majeure. [...]
[...] civ. 1re December 2000). It is the same in the case of a shoving (Cass. civ. 1re October 1975). This legendary rigor of the Court of Cassation towards the SNCF is sometimes breached. The Court has, for example, been able to admit that the active role of the thing is due to an event of force majeure which would find its source either in a natural event (Cass. [...]
[...] The first consists in demonstrating that the damage would find its source in an event of force majeure and not from the fact of the thing; the second consists in demonstrating that the fact of the thing would constitute for him an event of force majeure. The doctrine has not failed to note that the exoneration of the guardian of a thing that is the instrument of the damage is only possible in theory. Thus, H. Groutel qualifies force majeure as 'unfindable'. Even the SNCF claims an aggression in a train. For example, the Court of Cassation has refused to retain force majeure regarding an aggression in a train (Cass. [...]
[...] 2e civ July 2006) or in the fact of a third party. It is in this wake that the Court of Cassation inscribes itself in this case. The proof of force majeure, if it is reported, comes to demonstrate that the guardian of a thing could neither foresee nor prevent the intervention of the thing in the realization of the damage and that there was an absence of causality in the occurrence of the fact of the thing. Taking up a formula by F. [...]
[...] By a ruling dated 8 February 2018, the second civil chamber of the Court of Cassation rejects the appeal filed by the FGTI, confirming the appeal judgment. In light of the circumstances in which the damage occurred, namely the irrational behavior of the aggressor and the absence of altercation between the two men in the moments preceding the incident, the fact of the third party presented the characteristics of unpredictability and irresistibility for the SNCF, which was not able to prevent or foresee the accident. No surveillance measure or security installation would have been able to prevent the homicide. [...]
