Turnaround: the disappearance of mandatory prejudice in social matters (Cass. soc. April 13, 2016, n°14-28.293)

In a judgment intended for the widest publicity, the social chamber of the Court of Cassation returned to an orthodox assessment of the rules of civil liability which require trial judges to characterize the existence of damage before sovereignly assessing its amount.

Indeed, for twenty years, the social chamber decreed that certain breaches of the employer necessarily caused damage to the employee, leaving to the judges of the merits the surreal work consisting in evaluating and compensating this obligatory damage, even when it was (…)