Il diritto alla vita appeso al ramo e la svolta risarcitoria = The right to life hanging on the branch and the compensation turnaround. WP C.S.D.L.E. “Massimo D’Antona”.IT – 199/2014

Riverso, Roberto (2014) Il diritto alla vita appeso al ramo e la svolta risarcitoria = The right to life hanging on the branch and the compensation turnaround. WP C.S.D.L.E. “Massimo D’Antona”.IT – 199/2014. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

For about a century, Italian case law took the view (with only a few commendable exceptions) that a person who died immediately at the hands of another did not incur any form of indemnifiable injury or damage because – and here lies the paradox of the right to life – when death came, the subject in question no longer existed and was therefore unable to obtain the right to compensation and transmit it by succession. Basically, legislation could not compensate the injury to life as, by law, there was nothing to compensate and as there was no one who could take action for a remedy under civil law, compensation would have had a purely punitive function. Opposition to this concept – worrying to say the very least – was simply a matter of common sense and a feeling of justice that refuses to admit that a person who loses his or her life has not incurred injury or damage. Today this concept has finally been overturned by judgment no. 1361/2014 passed by the Court of Cassation that abounds with logical, juridical arguments.

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