The Particularities Of Non-Material Damages In Romanian Civil Law

The topic of this article may be analysed only by proceeding from the conception on civil liability. In our civil law, delictual civil liability represents common­law material liability, in the sense that its norms and principles are applied without exception if there are no special regulations. The Civil code also contains provisions regarding contractual civil liability which appear as different from the norms that regulate the regime of civil liability, but practically they are at the same time an application of these norms. Through its functions and characteristics, legal liability is at the centre of social liability, a position held both previously to adopting the new Civil code and today. Liability reflects the evolution of social life in its dynamics1. In the old Civil code from 1865, liability was regulated in art. 998­1003, which had the value of principles, complemented by a number of provisions on the effects of obligations, special contracts such as: sales agreements, lease agreements, contractor agreements etc. Analysing these texts, one may see that, at first, civil liability was characterised by universalism, individualism and moralism2. Namely, that any human deed causing damages to others requires a remedy; any person is individually responsible for the damages caused; and the idea of liability also implies the idea of sanctioning the author of a deed that has caused damages for culpability in committing the deed. Economic and social development, including the development of insurances, caused civil liability to stop being exclusively individual and founded on fault or guilt. Thus, there are more and more hypotheses in which liability is objective, without guilt, founded on the idea of risk, on social culpability and the idea of guarantee.