Arnaldo Lucaccioni v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 1999-09-09
9 According to the appellant, the Court of First Instance disregarded the principle established by the Court of Justice in Joined Cases 169/83 and 136/84 Leussink and Others v Commission [1986] ECR 2801, paragraphs 18 to 20, which lays down the obligation to give a ruling first on the liability of the institution and then on the other elements of an action for damages, in particular on whether the alleged harm has been made good by the benefits paid under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations.
10 The Commission's reply is essentially that the three conditions giving rise to liability on the part of the Community under the second paragraph of Article 215 of the EC Treaty (now the second paragraph of Article 288 EC) are cumulative, so that an institution does not incur liability if one of the three conditions has not been satisfied. The Court of Justice, it submits, did not depart from that rule in Leussink and Others v Commission, cited above, but examined the three factors giving rise to liability only because, in that case, the compensation provided for by the Staff Regulations was not sufficient to afford full redress to an official involved in an accident or suffering from an occupational disease.
11 It should be pointed out in this respect that, in paragraph 56 of the judgment under appeal, the Court of First Instance drew attention to the settled case-law which states that the Community can be held liable only if a number of conditions are satisfied as regards the illegality of the allegedly wrongful act committed by the institutions, the actual harm suffered and the existence of a causal link between the act and the damage alleged to have been suffered (see, inter alia, Case C-136/92 P Commission v Brazzelli Lualdi and Others [1994] ECR I-1981, paragraph 42, and Case T-36/93 Ojha v Commission [1995] ECR-SC I-A-161 and II-497, paragraph 130).
12 In paragraph 57, the Court of First Instance held that it followed that, even if fault on the part of the Commission were established, the Community would not incur liability unless the appellant could show that he had actually suffered harm.
13 As the Advocate General has noted in point 41 of his Opinion, neither the case-law of the Court of Justice nor that of the Court of First Instance supports the conclusion that the conditions giving rise to the liability of an institution must be examined in a particular order.
14 In so far as those three conditions must be satisfied cumulatively, the fact that one of them has not been satisfied is a sufficient basis on which to dismiss an action for damages.
15 The judgment in Leussink and Others v Commission cannot be regarded as establishing the principle that the condition relating to fault must be examined as a matter of priority. The fact that that condition was examined first in Leussink and Others v Commission was not attributable to any legal requirement.
16 The Court of First Instance was therefore correct in holding that it could consider first of all whether the appellant had established the existence of harm not yet made good by the compensation which had been granted him pursuant to Article 73 of the Staff Regulations.
17 In the second part of the first limb of the plea, the appellant criticises the Court of First Instance for having confused two totally independent compensation schemes subject to different criteria and governed by different systems of reparation: on the one hand, a lump-sum assessment scheme (Article 73 of the Staff Regulations) and, on the other, a scheme based on liability under ordinary law whereby compensation for damage is commensurate with the faults committed by the authority responsible. Comparison of the damage in question under those two schemes is possible only if the factors underlying it, namely permanent total invalidity in the case of Article 73 of the Staff Regulations and the examination of the faults which the Commission is accused of having committed in the case of the scheme based on liability, have been established at the outset. It is, after all, by reference to the faults committed by the Commission that the causal link and the damage suffered by the victim are measured.
18 The Commission submits that the appeal is inconsistent inasmuch as it claims that the Court of First Instance, on the one hand, disregarded the principles laid down in Leussink and Others v Commission, which prescribes compensation under ordinary law in addition to that payable under the staff insurance scheme, and, on the other hand, compared two totally different compensation schemes. The Commission also disputes the principles of liability under ordinary law as the appellant describes them.
19 It should be pointed out in this respect that the insurance cover against occupational disease and accident provided for in Article 73 of the Staff Regulations and in the Rules on the insurance of officials of the European Communities against the risk of accident and of occupational disease (`the Insurance Rules') allows an injured official to be paid lump-sum compensation by the institution by which he is employed. That compensation is calculated on the basis of the rate of invalidity and the basic salary of the official, without any regard to the liability of the person responsible for the accident or that of the institution which laid down the working conditions that may have contributed towards the onset of the occupational disease.
20 Such lump-sum compensation cannot, however, lead to double compensation for the harm suffered. It is to that end, moreover, that, where an accident or sickness is caused by a third party, Article 85a of the Staff Regulations provides that the Communities are to stand subrogated to the official's rights and rights of action, inter alia in respect of the benefits paid under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations.
21 Similarly, if an accident or sickness is attributable to the institution by which the official is employed, he cannot claim double compensation for the harm suffered, once under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations and again under Article 215 of the Treaty. In this sense, the two compensation schemes are not, contrary to the appellant's claim, independent.
22 It was with regard to the need for full, not double, compensation that the Court of Justice, in paragraph 13 of the judgment in Leussink and Others v Commission, recognised the right of an official to seek additional compensation where the institution is responsible for the accident according to ordinary law and the benefits payable under the staff insurance scheme are insufficient to provide full compensation for the injury suffered.
23 It follows that, in holding in paragraph 72 of the judgment under appeal that, in accordance with the principle established in Leussink and Others v Commission, the benefits received under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations following an accident or the onset of an occupational disease must be taken into account by the Court of First Instance for the purposes of assessing the harm eligible for reparation in an action for damages brought by an official on the basis of a fault capable of rendering the institution by which he was employed liable, the Court of First Instance correctly applied Article 215 of the Treaty and Article 73 of the Staff Regulations.
24 It follows that the first limb of the plea must be dismissed.
The second limb of the plea
25 In the first part of the second limb of the plea, Mr Lucaccioni takes issue with the finding of the Court of First Instance in paragraph 73 et seq. of the judgment under appeal that the amount paid under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations was appropriate compensation for the harm suffered. The request made by Mr Lucaccioni was not the same as a request under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations. It was an additional request for compensation based on different grounds and subject to different compensation criteria. The Court of First Instance was therefore wrong to hold in paragraph 74 of the judgment under appeal that the judgment in Case 152/77 B v Commission [1979] ECR 2819 concerned a different issue and could not be relied on in order to limit the scope of Leussink and Others v Commission, whereas, in B v Commission, the Court of Justice defined, in principle, the scope and purpose of the benefits authorised by Article 73 of the Staff Regulations as being benefits intended exclusively to compensate for the impairment of an official's bodily or mental health, but not the material harm for which he claims compensation.
26 The Commission submits that the judgment in Leussink and Others v Commission censures the cumulative award of the capital sum paid under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations and of damages sought by way of an action for reparation of a fault under ordinary law. This limb of the plea, it contends, has no basis in law inasmuch as the appellant maintains that the Court of First Instance disregarded the principle laid down in Leussink and Others v Commission.
27 It should be pointed out in this respect that, inasmuch as the appellant is criticising the Court of First Instance for having confused his request with a request for compensation based on Article 73 of the Staff Regulations, the first part of the second limb of the plea is essentially the same as the second part of the first limb of the plea, which has already been examined.
28 As the Court has stated in paragraph 22 of this judgment, the judgment in Leussink and Others v Commission applies the principle that an official who has suffered harm following a fault committed by an institution must receive full, but not double, compensation. The judgment in B v Commission, which relates to assessment of the rate of invalidity to be awarded to an official, does indeed concern a different issue and does not in any way invalidate the principle applied by the Court of Justice in Leussink and Others v Commission.
29 The Court of First Instance was therefore right to hold in paragraph 74 of the judgment under appeal that there was no valid reason not to take into account the benefits received under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations when assessing the material damage eligible for compensation in circumstances similar to those of this case, such as loss of earnings.
31 It should be observed in this respect that, according to the settled case-law of the Court, by virtue of Article 168a of the  EC Treaty (now Article 225 EC) and the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal may be based only on grounds relating to the infringement of rules of law, to the exclusion of any appraisal of the facts (see, inter alia, Case C-283/90 P Vidrányi v Commission [1991] ECR I-4339, paragraph 12, and Case C-19/95 P San Marco v Commission [1996] ECR I-4435, paragraph 39).
32 Furthermore, the Court of Justice has no more jurisdiction, on principle, to examine the evidence which the Court of First Instance accepted in support of those facts than to find the facts themselves (Commission v Brazzelli Lualdi and Others, paragraph 66).
33 Provided that that evidence has been properly obtained and the general principles of law and the rules of procedure in relation to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed, it is for the Court of First Instance alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced to it. The appraisal by the Court of First Instance of the evidence put before it does not therefore constitute, save where the evidence has been fundamentally misconstrued, a point of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice (Case C-7/95 P Deere v Commission [1998] ECR I-3111, paragraph 22).
34 For the same reasons, once the Court of First Instance has found the existence of damage, it alone has jurisdiction to assess, within the confines of the claim, the method and extent of compensation for the damage (see Commission v Brazzelli Lualdi and Others, paragraph 66, and Case C-259/96 P Council v De Nil and Impens [1998] ECR I-2915, paragraph 32).
35 However, in order for the Court to be able to review the judgments of the Court of First Instance, those judgments must be sufficiently reasoned and, as regards the assessment of the damage, indicate the criteria taken into account for the purposes of determining the amount decided upon (see Council v De Nil and Impens, cited above, paragraphs 32 and 33).
54 In the third limb of the plea, Mr Lucaccioni takes issue with paragraphs 76, 77 and 87 of the judgment under appeal inasmuch as the Court of First Instance failed, other than by way of an `equitable' and entirely subjective assessment, to give any objective and verifiable explanation, or to state any reasons, for including the damage suffered in the benefits paid under Article 73 of the Staff Regulations and Article 14 of the Insurance Rules.
61 With regard to the content of the plea, it follows from the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice and Article 112(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure that an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the judgment which it is requested to have set aside and the legal arguments in support of that request (see, inter alia, Case C-303/96 P Bernardi v Parliament [1997] ECR I-1239, paragraph 37, and Case C-317/97 P Smanor and Others v Commission [1998] ECR I-4269, paragraph 20).
62 Inasmuch as the fourth limb of the plea alleges that the Court of First Instance held that the Commission had not disregarded the procedures set out in Articles 73 and 78 of the Staff Regulations, but does not specify the legal basis on which the Court of First Instance ought to have formed the view that the Commission had infringed those provisions by failing to ask the Invalidity Committee, set up in 1991 on the basis of Article 78 of the Staff Regulations, to deliver an opinion on the possible occupational origin of the appellant's disease, it must be declared inadmissible.
63 Furthermore, even if this limb were declared admissible, it would still be irrelevant. In order to obtain compensation for the damage attributable to a delay in conducting proceedings for which the Commission can be held responsible, the onus is on the applicant to adduce proof of fault on the part of the institution, of the damage suffered, and of a causal link between the two, these three conditions being cumulative.
64 The appellant does not dispute the finding by the Court of First Instance in paragraph 143 of the judgment under appeal that the fact that the Invalidity Committee was not asked to deliver an opinion on the occupational origin of the disease did not cause him any harm since he was already entitled to the maximum pension rate referred to in the second paragraph of Article 78 of the Staff Regulations.