DAMAGE – CONSTITUTIVE ELEMENT OF TORT LIABILITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

In order to discuss about tort liability, several conditions need to exist: the illicit act, damage, causal link between the illicit act and damage, and last but not least, illicit offender fault. Thus, the damage is a sine qua non condition of tort liability, the illicit act being necessary but insufficient for its employment. Damage was defined as the harmful result, with a patrimonial or a non patrimonial nature, a result of violations of subjective rights and legitimate interests of an individual. It is known that the patrimonial damage does not present special discussions, but in terms of non patrimonial damage is required to be made a few observations. In the expression of environmental damage caused by pollution, it is used phrases like "environmental damage" or "environmental prejudice" including both the damages suffered by the natural environment through pollution as well as those incurred by the person or property, other than those in natural environment. In this paper we propose to analyze the environmental damage with special attention on the non patrimonial damage, both theoretically, but also in terms of jurisprudence.