Cour d'Appel, Paris

Where a person commits suicide in a psychopathic condition which is itself due to a combination of a trauma caused by an accident and a clinical predisposition, it is to be held that the accident which materialises the latent psychic condition is a direct cause of the suicide;

Accordingly, clinical predispositions of the victim do not even partially exonerate the party responsible for causing the damage; the clinical condition of the victim, not being due to the accident, must nevertheless be taken into account in evaluating the damage done.

Subsequent Developments

Doctrine upheld (but sometimes fluctuating). In connection with a suicide following upon an accident, the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation confirmed soon afterwards the terms of the decision of 8 January 1964 (decision of 24 November 1965) and held, more generally, “that the fact that the accident was only the indirect and partial cause of the suicide is not sufficient to establish that there does not exist direct loss for which the author of the accident must be liable”. By a decision dated 14 January 1971 (Bull. No. 13) the Criminal Chamber confirmed this doctrine in almost identical terms (“the fact that the accident which happened to a person who later committed suicide was only the (in?)direct and partial cause of his suicide is not sufficient to exclude the existence of direct loss upon which his heirs and successors can rely”) and “by holding to be direct the chain of causality between the fault of a motorist which caused a serious head injury and the suicide of the victim a few months later, even though there was noted a certain pathological predisposition of the victim, not seen previously” (Roland Starck and Boyer, op. cit., no. 1071). This doctrine seems to be upheld, even if a decision dated 24 April 1975 (same Chamber, not published in the Bulletin) laid down that “if it is found that the death of the victim who has committed suicide was not the necessary consequence of the fault of the author of the accident, it cannot be held that the accident was one of the causes, even indirect, of the death”.

As Patrice Jourdain has pointed pout (Fasc. 160 already cited, No. 37) “the cases are not in agreement concerning the relationship between the suicide of a person and the accident of which he was previously a victim. However, it seems that if it can be medically proved that there is a link between the state of depression of the victim and the accident, indemnification of the damage cannot be refused. Moreover, there are many decisions which accept the chain of causality”. Apart from the decisions already cited, the following may be mentioned: Civ.2 26 October 1972: Bull. II, No. 263 (“the lower court may rightly hold that the author of a traffic accident is liable for the suicide of the victim, which occurred several years after the events, provided that the court finds that the suicide was the result of progressive psychic disorder in the victim following the accident, and that the painful arthritis from which he suffered had changed his behaviour and had made him fear the loss of his professional situation”), Soc. 13 June 1979, Bull. No. 535 (“A Court of Appeal has given legal basis to its decision, by holding that the death of an employee by suicide was imputable to an accident at work which occurred three months previously, where that Court bases itself on a precise medical opinion from which it results that the suicide had not been a conscious and reasoned act, but the direct consequence, following a medically recognised process, of the neuro-psychic disorders caused by the accident”). See also Civ.2, 21 may 1990. A contrario, but in a fairly different case, Civ.2, 20 June 1985, Bull. No .125: absence of chain of causality between the fault of a shop-keeper who allowed a person who had stolen from him to return home bare-foot and the fact that the thief threw himself out of the window after getting home).

See also, more generally, and concerning traffic accidents: Civ.2, 19 February 1997: “The driver of a motorised land vehicle involved in a traffic accident can escape from his obligation to indemnify only if he can show that this accident has no relationship with the damage. For this reason, the Court must quash a decision which finds that the emotion provoked by the collision may have played a part in the death of the victim” and Civ.2, 27 January 2000: “Where the driver of a vehicle is hurt in a traffic accident and loses an eye during a later surgical operation, a Court of Appeal breaches the principle of total indemnification if it refuses his claim because the provisions of the law of 5 July 1985 ‘do not affect the proof of a chain of cause and effect between the accident and the damage’, whereas the operation was necessary because of the traffic accident and the damage would not have occurred in the absence of this accident which was the direct and certain cause thereof”. See also, in the area of accidents at work: Soc., 23 September 1982, Bull. No. 524: “Since, after considering all the elements of the case, the lower court found that the employee had been gravely upset a few months before his suicide by a work accident which necessitated a long stoppage of work and brought about a diminution of his physical and professional capacities, that there followed a grave and progressive depression by way of reaction which was the origin of the suicide, it could rightly decide that such accident was the root cause of this act of despair” and Soc., 4 February 1987, Bull. No. 64; “Where a decision, in order to grant the benefit of the law on accidents at work to the heirs and successors of an employee who had killed himself, finds essentially that (i) since the death happened in working hours at the workplace, such heirs and successors benefited from the presumption of liability and (ii) that the (Social Security?)Fund could not prove that his act of despair due to overwork and to personal difficulties, had been voluntary and reasoned, while at the same time finding that the suicide of that person was linked to a state of depression from which he had suffered for some time and that thus could not be imputed to the work on which he was engaged on the day of his death, so that it could not be a work accident, that decision must be quashed.”