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Faiblesse Oblige, Mauro Bussani

Mauro Bussani

A general principle of Western negligence law is that, whatever a person’s characteristics, (dis)abilities, strengths and weaknesses, his/her behavior should be judged against the standard of care expected from the ‘reasonable person’. The latter is a person allegedly endowed with average knowledge, conventional musculature, ordinary reactions, commonplace skills, and normal intelligence and memory – a ‘person without quality’. The aim of this paper is to offer comparative evidence to the fact that the ‘person without quality’ rule (ought not be, and) actually is not imposed upon below-average defendants – that is, persons who are weaker than the ‘reasonable person’, like …