Civil Law
Civil Law
Civil Law tests private-law reasoning: formation and performance of obligations, remedies for breach, tort liability, property rights, and the boundary between valid, void, and voidable acts. Expect fact patterns requiring you to identify the governing rule, apply it to ambiguous facts, and choose the remedy.
Core rules
- Contract formation: Offer plus acceptance creates a contract when the acceptance mirrors the offer; a purported acceptance that changes terms is a counteroffer. Civil-law systems often ask whether a lawful object or cause exists rather than common-law consideration.
- Defects of consent: Mistake, fraud, duress, and incapacity generally make an act voidable, not automatically void; the victim must elect to avoid and restore benefits.
- Breach and remedies: Expectation damages put the claimant in the position performance would have produced; reliance damages restore the status quo ante. Foreseeability and mitigation limit recovery.
- Tort: Duty, breach, causation (factual and legal), and damage. Negligence is judged by the reasonable person; strict liability is exceptional.
- Property: Ownership includes use, exclusion, and disposal, but good-faith acquisition, registration, and possession can defeat a prior informal right.
Worked example
A emails B: “I will sell you 100 chairs for 5,000, delivery 1 May.” B replies: “Agreed, but delivery 15 May.” A ships on 1 May; B refuses. B’s reply changed a material term, so it is a counteroffer, not acceptance; no contract formed on the original terms. If A had shipped and B accepted delivery, conduct could form a contract on the varied term. A cannot claim expectation damages for breach because B never accepted A’s offer.
Traps
Do not label every defective contract “void.” Distinguish void (no legal effect) from voidable (valid until avoided) and unenforceable. Do not award both expectation and reliance damages for the same loss. In tort, do not skip legal causation or damage; in property, do not ignore registration or good-faith purchase rules.