ABSTRACT

The medical cases can be seen not just as private law problems but equally as matters that a French lawyer would see as falling under administrative law. Similar category questions are associated with tort claims against local authorities or other governmental bodies.360 The ‘public law’ tort problems can raise special policy questions that are not found in purely private law professional liability cases and this can give them an extra dimension of complexity. The complexity is increased if the damage is of a special kind – in particular, nervous shock or pure economic loss – or was incurred more by an omission rather than a positive act.361 Public law liability, economic loss, nervous shock and the like, thus, deserve special treatment and are the subject of the next chapter.