Mezzanine without guardrails: who compensates the teenager who fell from the void?

The Civil Code states that one is liable for damage caused by "things in one's care" ( Article 1242 ). When the thing was "in motion" (such as a board that escaped a surfer's control and hit a swimmer), liability is presumed. When the thing was "inert" , liability must be proven: the victim must demonstrate that this thing presented an "abnormality" (in its structure, position or condition).

This principle applies to a mezzanine (a small platform set up in a room with a high ceiling), as the following case shows. On December 29, 2018, three teenage girls, A, B and C, celebrated the first one's birthday in a studio adjoining her home, but belonging to a friend of her mother, MY

Around 10 p.m., as the girls decided to change the sheets on the mezzanine bed, 13-year-old B fell over two meters. Firefighters rushed her to the nearest hospital emergency room, where she remained until January 3, 2019, due in part to a head injury.

In January 2022, the Xs, parents of B, sued Mr Y, seeking to have him declared liable for the damage suffered by their daughter, on the basis of Article 1242 of the Civil Code. They claimed that the mezzanine, because it had no guardrail, was "abnormally dangerous" .

They are requesting that Mr Y and his insurer, Le Finistère Assurance, be ordered to pay them provisional compensation of 5,000 euros, to be taken from the final compensation for their daughter's bodily injury.

The Xs are also suing ^Mrs Z, A's mother. They are requesting, in the alternative, that she be held liable for the accident, on the basis of Article 1241, under which "everyone is liable for the damage they have caused (...) through their negligence or imprudence" . They accuse her of having left the three minors unsupervised.

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