As desventuras do duty to mitigate the loss no Brasil: nascimento (e morte) de um brocardo

• Autor(a) principal: Comino, Tomas Barros Martins
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/13610
• topic: Duty to mitigate the loss; CISG; Common law; Enunciado 169; Dever de mitigar o prejuízo; Causalidade; Direito; Boa-fé (Direito); Direito civil; Responsabilidade (Direito); Danos (Direito)

Firstly, the paper briefly describes the common law tradition, setting the duty to mitigate the loss into the context of its own. Then, the paper draws the general lines that identify the mitigation doctrine in common law jurisdictions. Attention is given to the justifications of the duty to mitigate the loss and the roles it plays, including in the cases subject to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). In its context, the duty to mitigate the loss is primarily justified by causation and functions as a limit to compensation; it is not a 'duty'; it is applicable to the plaintiff; reasonableness of the mitigation steps and reimbursement of expenses are essential features to the mitigation doctrine. Secondly, the paper studies the duty to mitigate the loss in Brazil, from selected works of commentators and from decisions of the Superior Court of Justice and various state courts. Research has shown that the duty to mitigate the loss, under the equivalent name of 'mitigation doctrine', entered into Brazil by the work of commentators but little reflected in court decisions. Deprived of this earlier influence, the duty to mitigate the loss returned to Brazil through an 'enunciado' of the Federal Council of Justice, submitted in a document whose content is subject to criticism in this work, especially on the matter of the close connection between the duty to mitigate the loss and good faith (in its objective sense). Once the Superior Court of Justice invoked the 'enunciado' and the document in which it is based to decide a specific case, the duty to mitigate the loss rapidly expanded in Brazil. In São Paulo, it has gained the status of principle and aphorism. In the Superior Court of Justice, it has been considered a sub-principle of good faith and has been applied to adjective and substantive criminal cases. Comparatively, the common law notion of the duty to mitigate the loss is quite different to the Brazilian notion of it. This work indicates these differences and concludes with a classification of the roles that the duty to mitigate the loss plays in Brazil and with a draft proposal aimed at modifying the current version of the 'enunciado' of the Federal Council of Justice.