Indemnifying personal injury in France : tools for calculating damages

Personal injury damages, amounts, guidelines and schedules : where to find them

Are there guidelines for calculating personal injury damages in France ("barèmes" in French) ? In the UK there are the JSB Guidelines [1]. So is there a French equivalent ? Such was the question asked on the LIS-Law list in January 2006.

Quite surprisingly, a few days before, someone asked the same question on the French Juriconnexion mailing list (the thread is named "Pretium doloris"). Here are the answers :
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/ju...
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/ju...
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/ju...
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/ju...

To sum it up and add some of my own information : in France, there is still — but this may change : see at the end of this article — no official guidelines [2], but the judge may use any or none of the following sources :

• the GP-Doc CD-ROM from the Gazette du Palais [3] is a database containing somme 2500 summaries of case law in the field of personal injury damages, compensation for expropriation, seizure of real estate, ...
• containing data extracted from the Gazette du Palais, there is Indemnisation du dommage corporel, by Jean-Gaston Moore (3rd edition, Gazette du Palais, 2006)
• the "Jurisprudence" database on the French LexisNexis-Jurisclasseur online platform (alas, only available on annual subscription and quite expensive). It is the new name for the Juris-Data database of "cour d’appel" (second instance) judgments. The amount of damages awarded is generally mentioned in the summary of the judgement
• Le contentieux de l’indemnisation (LexisNexis, december 2005) : this looseleaf edition is quite big (approx. 400 pages) and is updated every six months. It contains data from nearly 2000 "cours d’appel" decisions, data which is extracted from the Juris-Data database cited above
• for those who have the JurisClasseur Civil or the JurisClasseur Responsabilité civile et assurances, there is : Évaluation du préjudice corporel : Tableau de jurisprudence des cours d’appel, 2002 et début 2003 (JurisClasseur Civil Code, Art. 1382 à 1386, Fasc. 202-40 : Régime de la réparation - Modalités de la réparation - Règles communes aux responsabilités délictuelle et contractuelle - Évaluation du préjudice corporel : Tableau de jurisprudence des cours d’appel, 2002 et début 2003) [4]. It is much less detailed, of course, than the preceding work
• local law reviews (almost all of them in paper format only), such as Revue de Jurisprudence de Basse Normandie or Revue de Jurisprudence Régionale (Montpellier)
• French insurers maintain a database of damages awarded by courts or, after out of court settlement, by insurers, to victims of accidents on the road. It is public but only accessible through minitel (3614 AGIRA). It is named AGIRA for "Association pour la gestion des informations sur le risque automobile" [5]
• there is a "barème" on Amazon.fr which, it seems, is implemented by judges : Barème d’évaluation médico-légale / Société de Médecine Légale et de Criminologie de France, Association des médecins experts en dommage corporel. - 144 p. - ESKA ; Alexandre Lacassagne, 2000
• finally, each "cour d’appel" has (e.g. : Lyon 2004, Aix-Marseille 2004, Rennes 3 times a year) or doesn’t have its own "barème". Ask the court directly.

Some further reading : one may be interested in these documents :

• on the excellent Journal des accidents et des catastrophes (JAC), some articles by Claude Lienhard, professeur des universités, directeur du Cerdacc [6] et avocat :
  • Réparation du dommage corporel : des progrès et des avancées judiciaires indéniables !. See part I La consécration judiciaire de la nomenclature actée par le rapport "Indemnisation du dommage corpo­rel" and part II Le libre choix du barème d’évaluation médico-légale
  • Dommage corporel, une avancée enfin décisive : le rapport Dintilhac [7]
• Rapport sur l’indemnisation du dommage corpo­rel rédigé un groupe de travail du Conseil national de l’aide aux victimes (CNAV) présidé par Yvonne Lambert-Faivre (Paris, ministère de la Justice, juin 2003) [8]
• proceedings of the symposium L’indemnisation du dommage corporel : les enjeux d’une réforme annoncée (Paris, 31 March 2005). See the second part of the symposium "La réforme de l’indemnisation du dommage corporel : pour ou contre une barémisation".

On a European level :

• The Pan European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL) has published :
  • Web Guide Book 1 : Personal Injury Compensation
  • Web Guide Book 2 : Fatal Accidents and Secondary Victims.
  • Personal Injury Awards in Europe (Kluwer, 2003)
• Guide barème européen d’évaluation médicale des atteintes à l’intégrité physique et psychique / Confédération européenne d’experts en évaluation et réparation du dommage corporel, dir. Pierre Lucas, Anthémis/LGDJ, 2006. As of 1st January 2006, this guide has been adopted as an imperative reference in evaluating industrial and home accidents European civil servants would be victim of.

One should note that the harmonisation of personal injury damages has become an issue in France and also in Europe, because of rising costs (6 to 7% per year in France) and the inequality between the amounts of damages awarded, which can differ a lot depending on the place and the tribunal. French insurers are pushing towards that and the French Supreme court (Cour de cassation) is currently thinking about it. On the European level, there are now official guidelines for EU civil servants [9]. So we may see, in a few years time, official French or EU guidelines for indemnifying personal injury.

Emmanuel Barthe
French law librarian researcher