Factual and legal obstacles to legal causality: interruptions and lack of causal link in civil and consumer liability - fact of the victim, fact of third party and act of God and of force majeure

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the framework of three legal categories that may interrupt the chain of causation (competing unforeseeable circumstances or force majeure) partially or (sole fortuity or force majeure)totally, and those that shun the agent’s duty to repair the damage partially or totally (third party and victim’s tort), under the liability of the current private law. The densification of these objective legal categories is meant to check whether the focus of the civil and consumer liability primarily protects the victim or the damage doer to ratify the necessary passage to the idea of liability for damages. Thus, two hypotheses are presented: (i) the current theoretical and practical construction of the above categories prioritizes the victim; (ii) the current theoretical and practical construction of the above-mentioned categories does not prioritize the victim. Therefore, the text uses, as theoretical framework, the idea of liability for damage developed by Pablo Malheiros da Cunha Frota, whose chosen method for this article merges deduction and induction, with the prius theoretical statements of a general nature, applicable in each case assessed deductively. Such elements, inductively, may represent the need for resignification (or not) of legal categories surveyed in each concrete situation. The methodology used is divided into procedure and approach. The former uses the monographic procedure with the analytical work related to the subject. The latter is based on a critical-methodological approach underpinned on a critical theory of reality that understands the law as both a problem and as a complex network of languages and meanings. The conclusion of the text endorsed the second hypothesis above.