Review article
https://doi.org/10.22598/iele.2024.11.1.11
THE CONCEPT OF MORAL (NON-MATERIAL) DAMAGE IN SERBIAN, CROATIAN AND SLOVENIAN LAW
Attila Dudás
; Faculty of Law. University of Novi Sad, Serbia
Abstract
The paper gives a comparison of the concept of moral (non-material) damage in the Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian law. In Serbia, with some amendments, the 1978 Obligations Act is still in force. However, these have not modified the notion of moral damage: moral damage must have, as a consequence, a meaningful distress in the injured party’s intimate sphere, manifested either in bodily pain, mental pain or fear. Infringement of personality rights itself does not give rise to claim for compensation, if not manifested in at least one of the three categories. The basic consequence of this approach is that legal persons are not considered to be able to sustain moral damage, hence they cannot claim compensation either. In the Draft of the Civil Code a certain shift towards the objectivization of the concept can be identified. Such tendency is supported in the recent doctrine as well (M. Karanikić Mirić). In the Croatian Obligations Act from 2005 the notion of moral damage is defined purely objectively: infringement of personality rights. The Slovenian Obligations Code, in defining moral damage, basically retained the trichotomy of bodily pain, mental pain and fear, inherited from the 1978 OA, but supplemented it with the infringement of personality rights. Both in the Croatian OA and Slovenian OC, legal persons are entitled explicitly to claim compensation for moral damage.
Keywords
moral damage; non-material damage; compensation for moral damage; infringement of personality rights
Hrčak ID:
318735
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2024.
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