Article 1382 of the civil code, now Article 1240 since the reform of October 1, 2016, can be summarized in one sentence: “Any act of man that causes damage to another obliges the person at fault to repair it.” This text establishes tort liability in French law. It applies to any person in any situation where a wrongful act causes harm to another, outside of any contract.
Article 1240 of the civil code: the mechanism of tortious fault
Tort liability is based on a precise triptych. For a victim to obtain compensation, three elements must be simultaneously present. The absence of even one is enough to cause the legal action to fail.
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- A generating act: a fault, meaning a behavior that deviates from what a reasonably prudent person would have done in the same circumstances. The fault can be an action (a clumsy gesture, negligence) or an omission (failing to signal a danger).
- A damage suffered by the victim: it can be bodily (injury), material (damaged property), or moral (harm to reputation, psychological suffering). The damage must be certain, direct, and personal.
- A causal link between the fault and the damage: the victim must demonstrate that without the fault committed, the damage would not have occurred. This is often where disputes become complicated before the judge.
This mechanism applies both between individuals and between businesses. As detailed in Article 1382 of the civil code on Conceze, this provision permeates entire areas of daily life, from neighbor disputes to road accidents.
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Enforceability of contractual clauses against third parties: a recent turning point
Competitors rarely address the impact of recent case law on third parties to the contract. However, the Court of Cassation (commercial chamber, December 17, 2025, no. 24-20.154, published in the Bulletin) has significantly changed the situation.
What the ruling of December 17, 2025 changes
A third party who suffers damage caused by the improper execution of a contract could, until now, act based on Article 1240 without worrying about the clauses of the contract in question. Since this ruling, the liability limitation clauses provided in a contract are enforceable against the third party who acts in tort liability.
In practice, this means that a neighbor who suffers damage caused by a subcontractor can be confronted with the limitation of liability clause included in the contract between the project owner and the company. The same reasoning applies to clauses of forfeiture or prior conciliation.
This evolution reduces the protective scope of Article 1240 for victims who are not parties to the contract. It now requires checking the content of the agreements in question before initiating a tort action.
Tort liability and divorce: accumulation of damages
Article 1240 also finds concrete application in family law. The Court of Cassation (1st civil chamber, July 10, 2024) confirmed that the action for damages based on Article 1240 accumulates with that of Article 266 of the civil code, specific to divorce.
Two distinct grounds for two different damages
Article 266 of the civil code allows for compensation for the damage related to the dissolution of the marriage itself. Article 1240, on the other hand, covers damages caused by faults committed during the marriage, regardless of the breakdown of the marital bond.
A spouse who is a victim of violence can thus obtain damages based on Article 266 (for the consequences of the divorce) and based on Article 1240 (for the bodily or moral harm suffered due to the violence). The two claims do not overlap, provided that the damages claimed are distinct.
Online defamation and unfair competition: Article 1240 as a sanctioning tool
Tort liability is the main legal basis used to sanction unfair competition and commercial parasitism. No specific text governs unfair competition in French law: it is Article 1240 that fulfills this role.
Online defamation illustrates this mechanism well. A defamatory review published by a competitor, a devaluation campaign on social media, or the systematic appropriation of a competitor’s visual identity can ground an action for damages.
The victim must prove the fault, the damage, and the causal link.
Proving damage in a digital context
The main difficulty remains the quantification of the damage. A loss of clientele linked to fraudulent negative reviews is rarely demonstrable by a simple revenue statement. The judge accepts various indicators: decrease in website traffic, timestamped screenshots, bailiff reports, customer testimonials.
Article 1240 thus adapts to digital disputes, even though its wording dates back to 1804 (under the former number 1382). Its deliberately broad formulation – “any act whatsoever” – gives it a plasticity that few other texts in the civil code possess.
This adaptability explains why Article 1240 remains the most invoked text before French civil courts. From abnormal neighborhood disturbances to medical faults, from commercial defamation to property enjoyment damage, its scope continues to expand through case law, without the need for the legislator to modify the text’s wording.