Paper's abstract

Hervé Rigot-Müller, Law and Madness: An Irresponsible Responsibility of the Insane in Civil Law
According to the law enacted on January 3rd 1968, an insane is bound to compensated civil damages (art. 486-2 of the French Civil code). Such a compensation cannot be legally founded on subjective responsibility, which requires a fault (art. 1382 civil code) but on objective responsibility, which discards imputability. Applying objective liability to the insane's civil damages, without any subjective consideration, makes his responsibility heavier and his compensation more severe than that of the normal person. Even if it is true that both regimes of liability coexist under French law, the choice of objective liability over subjective responsibility does not justify itself right away. This brings out a feeling of inequity and furthermore, the text that was meant to reestablish some form of equity was, in this particular case, pushed aside. It is then possible to ask if the recent liability if the insane in civil matters is still a "compensation". If it is not, and if compensation is not longer the primary goal of article 486-2, is the liability of the insane, which became an end in itself, not, through a specious normalisation, the desire to purely and simply deny madness?

Key Words : Madness, Responsibility
t. 36, 1991 : p. 265-286

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