The Brazilian Civil Code, the influence of the course of time on Law and liabilities arising from contract breach

the controversies related to prescriptive period

Abstract

The article is related to the statute of limitation concerning the breach of a contractual obligation and the breach of a general duty consisting of not causing harm to anybody. Unfortunately, there are in Brazilian law doctrine and jurisprudence two different points of view concerning the duration of the statute of limitation: According to a first opinion there is an important difference between both kinds of liability, consequentely, the duration of the statute of limitation must be different in each case, ten years for the breach of a contractual obligation and three years for breach of the general duty consisting in not produce harm to anybody. A second group of Law Professors and Judges do not see a relevant difference between both kind of liabilities. Researching comparative law, it was found that today many Civil Codes do not accept the distinction between both liabilities. Besides that, the article selected some important examples of the European Codes Reform, that adopted shorter terms for both kinds of liability in their statute of limitation. It is the case of the German Civil Code and the French one, both under the influence of the majority European law doctrine.