# Civil Liability and Torts

Business I · Business Law · https://tryals.app/learn/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts

## When You Must Pay for Harm

Civil liability answers **who bears the cost of a harm?** Two doors lead there, dividing obligations into separate legal regimes.

| | Contractual | Extracontractual (Tort) |
|---|---|---| 
| **Link** | A breached agreement | The general duty not to harm |
| **Duty** | The contract's terms | Reasonable diligence |
| **Case** | Late builder, bad delivery | Traffic accident, falling sign |

**Extracontractual liability** stems from **Article 1902 of the Civil Code**: **whoever by action or omission causes damage to another, with fault or negligence, must repair the damage caused.**

Liability needs three elements like a circuit in series: **Fault**, **Damage**, and **Causation**. If any element is missing, the claim collapses completely.

## The Elements and Business Risk

To trigger **Article 1902**, all three elements must hold simultaneously:

- **Fault or negligence**: falling below the diligence of a reasonable person. Accidents without negligence stay where they fall.
- **Damage**: a real, provable harm. Includes actual loss (**daño emergente**), lost profits (**lucro cesante**), and moral damage.
- **Causation**: the conduct must directly cause the damage. **Force majeure** or the victim's act breaks this chain.

**Business exposures**: An employer faces **vicarious liability** for employee torts. Manufacturers face **strict liability** where fault drops out of the formula. 

> **Pitfall:** Courts increasingly presume fault in risky activities. The defendant must prove diligence, turning managerial arithmetic—probability times magnitude—into an urgent necessity.

## Practice questions

7 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Match each liability term to its meaning.

**Answer:**

- Daño emergente → The loss actually suffered
- Lucro cesante → The profit the victim failed to earn
- Vicarious liability → Employer answering for employees’ torts
- Force majeure → Unforeseeable event breaking causation

**Why:** Two heads of damage, one transferred liability, one causal escape hatch, the working vocabulary of any claim.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/match-each-liability-term-to-its-meaning

### 2. A driver observes every rule and still injures a pedestrian; a manufacturer's flawless product injures a user through an undetectable defect. Why does liability treat these differently?

A. Because manufacturers have more money than drivers
B. Because product defects are always the manufacturer's fault by definition
C. Because strict liability attaches to creating a risk, not to fault
D. Because pedestrians are more vulnerable than product users

**Answer:** C. Because strict liability attaches to creating a risk, not to fault

**Why:** Strict liability asks who should bear an unavoidable risk rather than who misbehaved, and the answer is whoever created it, profits from it and can price it into the product. Fault-based rules deter carelessness; strict rules allocate residual risk, and they are different jobs.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/a-driver-observes-every-rule-and-still-injures-a-pedestrian-a

### 3. A perfectly maintained machine explodes due to an undetectable hidden defect no inspection could reveal, injuring nobody but destroying the firm’s own warehouse wall. A neighbor sues the firm under art. 1902 for the _fright_ of the bang. What is the claim’s weakest point?

A. No provable damage and no negligence
B. Claims require at least two victims
C. Art. 1902 only covers intentional acts
D. The neighbor should have sued in contract

**Answer:** A. No provable damage and no negligence

**Why:** A mere fright without provable harm is not damage, and diligence was flawless, so there is no fault either. One missing element kills a claim; here two are gone.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/a-perfectly-maintained-machine-explodes-due-to-an-undetectable-hidden

### 4. Which harms can Spanish tort law compensate?

A. Repair cost of the damaged property
B. Moral damage, such as harm to reputation
C. A harm that is merely feared but has not occurred
D. Profits lost while the business stood idle

**Answer:** A. Repair cost of the damaged property; B. Moral damage, such as harm to reputation; D. Profits lost while the business stood idle

**Why:** Actual loss, lost profits, and moral damage are all compensable, but damage must be *real and proven*. The law repairs harms, it does not insure anxieties.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/which-harms-can-spanish-tort-law-compensate

### 5. Under art. 1902 a company escapes liability for an employee's negligence provided the company itself acted carefully.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** False. Art. 1903 extends liability to employers for harm caused by employees acting within their duties, *culpa in vigilando*, so corporate care is not a complete defence. The rationale is that the business takes the profit from the activity and is best placed to insure and prevent.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/under-art-1902-a-company-escapes-liability-for-an-employees

### 6. Order the life of a tort claim.

**Answer:**

1. The negligent act causes the harm
2. The victim quantifies daño emergente and lucro cesante
3. A claim is filed proving the three elements
4. The court weighs fault, damage, and causation
5. Compensation restores the victim’s position

**Why:** Harm → quantification → claim → judgment → repair. The end goal is restorative: to put the victim, in money, where the tort found them.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/order-the-life-of-a-tort-claim

### 7. Complete art. 1902’s formula.

**Answer:** Whoever by action or omission causes **damage** to another, with fault or **negligence**, must repair it.

**Why:** Damage plus fault-or-negligence (and the causal "causes"), the whole of Spanish tort law compressed into one sentence of 1889.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/civil-liability-and-torts/complete-art-1902s-formula