NON-CONTRACTUAL LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF DAMAGE CAUSED TO ANOTHER, prepared by Christian von Bar Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), Principles of European Law, Study Group on a European Civil Code, 2009. lvii + 1,384 pp. ISBN 9780199229413. £150.
| Author | Mark Godfrey |
| Published date | 01 May 2011 |
| Date | 01 May 2011 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2011.0038 |
| Pages | 314-315 |
This volume contains text and commentary prepared for Book VI of the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR). The contents are reviewed in substance in the preceding review in this issue. The background to this separate volume is that the DCFR was prepared by the Study Group on a European Civil Code and the Research Group on EC Private Law (Acquis Group). The Study Group began work in 1998, but alongside preparation of the final integrated edition of its work in the DCFR it has published component parts along the way with Oxford University Press in a separate series called “Principles of European Law” (PEL). This volume appears in that series, alongside similar volumes on Sales, Lease of Goods, Commercial Agency, Franchise, and Distribution Contracts, Service Contracts, Personal Security, Unjustified Enrichment, and Benevolent Intervention in Another's Affairs. Further volumes yet to appear include those on Trust Law, Donation, Mandate Contracts, Loan Agreements, Transfer of Title in Movables, and Security Rights in Movables. The main difference (in terms of content) from the DCFR itself is that the individual PEL volumes contain comparative introductions to individual chapters and translations of the Articles themselves from English into the other 16 languages of the Member States. In this volume such introductions are provided for the first three chapters (“Fundamental provisions”, “Legally relevant damage”, “Accountability”), though not for subsequent chapters (on “Causation”, “Defences”, “Remedies” or “Ancillary rules”). In his Foreword to this volume, Professor von Bar also notes more generally that there are “occasionally small discrepancies between the model rules published in this series and those of the Draft Common Frame of Reference” (xi), explained by him as primarily a consequence of the PEL volumes having been conceived as self-contained treatments, and also because the drafting of the final DCFR text was able to take account of earlier criticisms made of the model rules in the PEL series (the relationship of the PEL to the history of the DCFR project is also narrated at paras 45–47 of the Introduction in volume 1 of the DCFR itself).
Although the PEL volumes are far from inexpensive, they provide to a very limited extent a...
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