The victim of an injury who was not working can be compensated for not having been able to subsequently resume an activity, but on the condition of proving that he was indeed looking to work at the time. It is not enough, said the Court of Cassation, to have had the idea or the desire to rework and to have communicated it to those around you for it to become a certain project and justify compensation.
Following a surgical procedure which left her with after-effects, a patient was compensated by the National Medical Accident Compensation Office (Oniam) which covers compensation, as part of national solidarity, when the damage is due to an accident or the bad result of an intervention for which no one is responsible. But Oniam contested having to pay compensation for the impossibility of resuming work which would have generated income.
At the time of the operation, this patient had stopped working for several years to take care of her children and nothing establishes that she would have sought to work again if the medical accident had not prevented her from doing so, argued the ‘Oniam. She was not registered as a job seeker, she does not prove that she submitted her application to employers and there is no evidence that she was looking for a job, or even that she was preparing to look for one. one, added Oniam.
In response, the person concerned presented the testimonies of neighbors and relatives to whom she had told, before the medical intervention, that she intended to return to work. But this testimony is insufficient to prove the reality of an unsatisfied search for work due to the medical accident, concluded the Court of Cassation. According to her, compensation in such a case could then have provided the victim with a profit while the principle of compensation is to cause neither loss nor profit.
(Cass. Civ 1, 13.9.2023, N 22-18.867).
Reproduction forbidden.