Even more than individuals, companies are exposed to claims for damages from third parties who may be harmed by their activity. Not only are firms normally more creditworthy than private individuals, this increases the expectation of a settlement for injured parties, but they must be compensated for damages caused during their service by their employees (RC Committing) as well as damages attributed to their products (RC Products), even after delivery, or errors committed in the way their services were provided to their clients (Professional RC). A special case of corporate liability concerns goods entrusted by customers for repair or custody (RC Custodian)
There is generally a reduction in the importance of the fault and an extension of the area of strict liability which exempts the victim from proving the fault of the entrepreneur but simply a causal link between the damage and the activity of the company.
Different rules apply in the case of contractual liability, related to the normal activity of manufacturing and selling products or supplies of services, and to tort liability unrelated to any contractual relationship with a customer. The contractual liability extends well beyond the direct customers of the company, since in the case of post-delivery CR, it covers the final user of the product regardless of the number of intermediaries and successive resales since the departure From the factory.
Courts and sometimes the legislature have shown a clear tendency to accommodate victims' demands more and more favorably and to protect consumers in the event of damages.
Exclusion or limitation of liability clauses in sales contracts are either prohibited or rendered ineffective by law.
In most cases, the manufacturer can no longer rely on the state-of-the-art or state-of-sience given that:
when the product was manufactured, it was surrounded by all the possible precautions at the time and it is only the later evolution of science or techniques that revealed the defect or the dangerousness of the product.
The Civil Liability of the Corporate Officers *
More and more people aggrieved by the activity of a company, third parties, customers, employees and now shareholders and creditors, implicate the personal responsibility of the directors of the company (directors, members of the Supervisory Board or Management Board , general managers) and not only the responsibility of the company.
A new need for a guarantee has therefore emerged in the face of which certain corporate risk insurers have developed the insurance contract for the liability of corporate officers to cover court costs and any damages awards to which their clients may be liable. These contracts obviously exclude criminal convictions and damages voluntarily caused by insured persons.
Civil liability due to pollution
Some companies handle toxic products and release waste that can have adverse effects on the environment. The inhabitants of the neighboring regions of these companies and the public authorities responsible for the health of the citizens are more and more sensitive to all that can threaten the public health, the quality of the agricultural products, the quality of the waters and even the beauty of landscapes and sites. Industrial activities are therefore subject to increasingly stringent regulations and strict obligations to control, prevent and treat their waste. Compliance with these standards does not protect them from claims for damage caused by pollution as a result of an accident, pipeline breakage, machine breakage, failure to comply with standards by an employee even the inadequacy of these standards themselves.
Much work has been done by insurers and industrialists to try to identify the risks associated with pollution and propose appropriate warranty. Many business liability insurance contracts formally exclude all environmental damage caused by pollution. Some grant, within specific limits and specific capital, the guarantee of the damages caused by an accidental pollution, that is to say sudden and whose cause can be immediately determined and corrected: for example flow of toxic waste in a river following the rupture of a pipe. The problem remains for non-accidental pollution: for example, damage caused by a permanent discharge of fumes. damage to a water table under a landfill. Insurers in some markets have sometimes inclined to offer at least partial guarantees to their customers, but the price charged for these guarantees discourage most manufacturers from buying them.
CR Pollution has become a major social problem because the public authorities, often supported by the courts, have undertaken a very large and very expensive program of cleaning polluted sites and industrial discharges and have intended to put the cost of this program to the companies identified as pollutants and that have accumulated waste for decades. These companies have turned to their insurers who, of course, had never imagined covering this kind of costs at the time of the subscription of contracts often very old. The case has given rise to innumerable lawsuits, of which the lawyers and lawyers have mostly won, without the question being solved.
