Risques sanitaires sériels et responsabilité civile: étude comparée des droits français et anglais

Since the second half of the 20th century, our daily lives have been affected by mass public health risks which have been facilitated by a modernisation of societies. Examples of those include contaminated blood, DES, asbestos, glyphosate, BSE and relay antennas. These mass public health risks, capable of manifesting themselves in any sector of human activity (health, professional, environmental or food-related), often result in numerous victims of personal injury seeking compensation, triggering civil liability. Yet, civil liability is put to the test and forced to evolve to guarantee its traditional compensatory function to be carried out. First at a collective level, the demand for compensating “series” of victims changes the importance given to civil liability within the compensation system, for example through the introduction of group actions and the multiplication of specific regimes of compensation and liability. Second at an individual level, the traditional requirements of civil liability, and in particular that of causation, are put to the test due to the lack of scientific knowledge often associated with these above-mentioned risks. Faced with these difficulties, it is important to determine whether civil liability does succeed in offering a coherent and satisfactory treatment of personal injury resulting from mass public health risks or whether, on the contrary, it is doomed to crumble, if not collapse. French and English Law have been confronted with similar issues, but have provided partly differing responses, therefore revealing a much deeper divergence as to the objectives pursued, and the role played, by civil liability in their respective legal systems.