Benjamin Janke

The year 2014 was a busy one for legal lexicographers. Bryan Garner’s extensive undertaking of adding 7,500 new entries to his fourth unabridged edition of Black’s Law Dictionary (10th ed.) illustrates that the work of defining the law is never complete. But there is another impressive work of legal scholarship that should be particularly appealing to the Louisiana lawyer: the Dictionary of the Civil Code. At its root, the Dictionary of the Civil Code is an English translation of more than 1,600 civil law concepts in the French Vocabulaire juridique, first published in 1936 under the direction of Henri Capitant and later revised extensively under the supervision of Gerard Cornu, dean of the University of Poitiers Law School. The Vocabulaire juridique was translated into the Dictionary of the Civil Code under the supervision of Alain A. Levasseur, leading the Louisiana team, and Marie-Eugenie Laporte-Legeais, leading the Poitiers-Juriscope team at the University of Poitiers. A close ...

La Louisiane est fondamentalement refractaire aux dommages-interets punitifs. Cette position s’illustre evidemment par son droit substantiel, mais n’est pas sans repercussion sur son systeme de conflits de lois. Si le legislateur louisianais n’est pas alle jusqu’a adopter une clause d’ordre public, il a insere dans le Code civil de Louisiane une disposition visant a restreindre les cas ou le juge louisianais pourra allouer des dommages-interets punitifs. Au-dela de la presentation de cette norme originale, l’article permet une reflexion sur les interets en presence lorsque surgit un conflit de lois en matiere de dommages-interets punitifs. There is perhaps no better laboratory to scrutinize punitive damages than Louisiana. As a civil law island surrounded by common law jurisdictions, it shares some compensation principles that are decidedly civilian, and others that are clearly influenced by its American neighbors. Likewise, Louisiana’s geography has given rise to a sophisticated, and well-exercised, system for addressing conflicts of laws. Here, the intersection of divergent principles of compensation provokes an inquiry into the validity of the “full compensation” theory. The conflicts analysis in the context of delicts and quasi-delicts, and especially in the context of punitive damages, is complex and involves a plurality of norms of the Louisiana Civil Code (La. Civ. Code). The general inquiry under Louisiana’s conflicts analysis is the determination of the state whose policies would be most seriously impaired if its law were not applied to that issue. The central provision is La. Civ. Code art. 3515, which states: Except as otherwise provided in this Book, an issue in a case having contacts with other states is governed by the law of the state whose policies would be most seriously impaired if its law were not applied to that issue. That state is determined by evaluating the strength and pertinence of the relevant policies of all involved states in the light of: (1) the relationship of each state to the parties and the dispute; and (2) the policies and needs of the interstate and international systems, including the policies of upholding the justified expectations of parties and of minimizing the adverse consequences that might follow from subjecting a party to the law of more than one state. Analyzing this article with other Code articles and Louisiana case-law, the authors conclude that the likelihood that a Louisiana court will enforce a foreign punitive damage law is low, given that the conflicts analysis weighs heavily in favor of a determination that the tortfeasor has more contacts with Louisiana than elsewhere. The general policy prohibiting punitive damages greatly influences every factor of the conflicts analysis except for those factors that clearly weigh in favor of applying the law of another state. So long as Louisiana holds on to the belief that punitive damages are per se incompatible with the theory of full compensation, the conflicts analysis for punitive damages will seldom result in the imposition of the law of another state.

... See JAMES J. FAWCETT & JANEEN CARRUTHERS, CHESHIRE AND NORTH'S PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW 555–56 (2008); Michael Polonski, Particular Issues Affecting the Recognition and Enforcement of US Judgments, 19-AUT INT'L PRACTICUM 156 (2006). ...

The relationship between Louisiana and France is not limited to written law. It also exists in one important extra-codal principle of prescription law : contra non valentem agere non currit praescriptio. In this regard, the juridical parenthood is tight. We will show that contra non valentem in Louisiana is the fruit of French doctrine and jurisprudence. Furthermore, we will bring to light the noticeable similarity of the maxim’s fate in France and Louisiana. Courts in both jurisdictions proclaimed it as dead, but despite the hostility it faced, contra non valentem evolved as a major component of prescription law. Finally, we will dispel a deep-rooted myth that contra non valentem does not apply to the domain of acquisitive prescription and reveal another strong convergence between Louisiana and France.La relation entre la France et la Louisiane ne se limite pas au droit légiféré. Elle se manifeste aussi en ce qui concerne un important principe non écrit du droit de la prescription : contra non valentem agere non currit praescriptio. En ce domaine, la parenté juridique est étroite. En Louisiane, contra non valentem est le fruit de la doctrine et de la jurisprudence françaises. Nous mettrons aussi en lumière la similarité notable entre le destin de la maxime en France et en Louisiane. Dans ces deux pays, les tribunaux l’ont déclarée morte, mais malgré l’hostilité à laquelle elle a été confrontée, elle est devenue une pièce majeure du droit de la prescription. En dernier lieu, nous briserons le mythe bien enraciné selon lequel contra non valentem ne s’applique pas en droit louisianais de la prescription acquisitive, révélant ainsi une autre convergence de taille entre la France et la Louisiane.West Janke Benjamin, Licari François-Xavier. Des rives de la Seine à celles du Mississipi : le fabuleux destin de la maxime contra non valentem agere non currit praescriptio. In: Revue internationale de droit comparé. Vol. 63 N°4,2011. pp. 809-842