Civil Law and the Law of Obligations
The architecture to master
Start from the Civil Code of 2019 (Book 5 on obligations), which recast much of the old Code. A candidate must command: the sources of obligations (contract, quasi-contract, delict, unjust enrichment); formation (offer, acceptance, causa, capacity, consent free of error, fraud, violence, abuse of circumstances); the sanction regime of nullity (relative vs absolute, prescription); performance and non-performance; the three remedies of forced performance, termination and damages; and the rules on transfer of ownership and risk. Know Book 3 (property) and Book 8 (evidence) because questions cross-reference them.
Traps that recur
- Consent defects: error must be excusable and bear on a determinant element; fraud requires intentional misrepresentation; abuse of circumstances needs exploitation of a position of weakness producing a manifest disproportion.
- Causa vs consideration: Belgian law retains causa; do not import common-law doctrines.
- Termination: judicial termination is the default, but unilateral termination clauses and the exceptio non adimpleti contractus are heavily tested.
- Prescription: the general contractual period is ten years; tort is five years from knowledge, capped at twenty; be precise.
- Damages: foreseeability and certainty of loss; mitigation is not a codified duty but is weighed.
Rule of thumb
When a question involves a chain of contracts, first ask who is bound to whom (privity), then what remedy each party holds against its own counterparty. Never let a sub-buyer sue the original seller in contract unless a stipulation for another (stipulation pour autrui) or a legal action exists. For a defective good sold twice, the sub-buyer's contractual claim runs against its own seller, and only the direct action under the sale regime bridges the gap.
Worked example: A sells a machine to B, who resells to C; the machine fails. C's contractual claim is against B; C may invoke the direct action against A only within the sale regime's conditions, and A's liability to B is limited by the exclusion clause B accepted - which C cannot simply ignore.