Parental responsibility in the event of injury
Parental responsibility in the event of injury
The world of Julie readers is a small one... The fact that your son has been injured unquestionably constitutes a wrongful act within the meaning of article 41 of the Code of Obligations (CO), which we examined in these columns last week.Article 46 of the CO stipulates that in the event of bodily injury, the injured party is entitled to reimbursement of his or her costs, including medical costs and any other expenses incurred in connection with the injury suffered, payment of any damages resulting from his or her inability to work, and compensation for any damage to his or her economic future.It will be up to the victim to prove the extent of his or her loss, in particular by means of the Capitalisation Tables, which are an actuarial instrument that can be used, among other things, to determine the total amount of income that a person will lose throughout his or her life if he or she has to choose a less well-paid occupation due to a disability, resulting for example from bodily injuries that affect his or her long-term abilities.If the victim's state of health has not stabilised during the course of the proceedings, the judge may, if it is impossible to put an exact figure on the amount of the damage, reserve the right to review the situation at a later date, within a maximum of two months from the date of his or her own decision. Finally, article 49 of the Swiss Code of Obligations provides that in the event of unlawful injury to personality, the injured party may claim a sum of money by way of moral compensation if the seriousness of the injury so warrants. In Switzerland, such compensation is very modest compared with what is paid abroad. The Federal Office of Justice has drawn up a guide to determining the amount of moral compensation to be paid to victims of crime, which gives an order of magnitude of the amount awarded, available at www.bj.admin.ch. In the case of the loss of a major organ function, the amount of moral compensation could fall within a range of between CHF 20,000 and CHF 40,000, while extreme damage that severely reduces mobility and/or intellectual and social functions, such as blindness, deafness, paraplegia or even tetraplegia, will give rise to compensation of between CHF 40,000 and CHF 70,000.
