Works contracts - Construction insurance

The term "construction insurance" is usually used to refer to the area of law applicable to builders' liabilities that may arise after acceptance of work, and to insurance designed to cover these liabilities.

This treatise (cf. articles on public works contracts and concessions [C 72] and private works contracts [C 74] ) provides some information on builders' liability and insurance.

In France, the ten-year liability of builders has been enshrined in law for over two centuries, since the Civil Code of 1804 already stipulated that architects and contractors were liable for 10 years in the event of a building being damaged by a construction defect.

However, the need to insure this liability only arose in the 2nd half of the 19th century, on the initiative of contractors who set up mutual insurance companies, with the first ten-year insurance policy appearing in 1923.

Since then, builder liability has been modernized in stages over the course of the 20th century, culminating in a coherent set of rules covering liability and guarantees in the Civil Code, and compulsory insurance in the Insurance Code.

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a more comprehensive and synthetic approach to these issues, taking into account the forty-five years of application of the Act of January 4, 1978, which overhauled positive law, the partial reform brought about by the Order of June 8, 2005 on compulsory insurance in the construction field, and the recodification brought about by the Act of June 17, 2008 reforming the statute of limitations in civil matters.Logic dictates that we first review the liability regime applicable to builders (§ 1 ), before examining...