Da summa divisio obrigacional meios/resultados à presunção de culpa na responsabilidade civil contratual médica

• Autor(a) principal: Pinto, Diana José Morais Morgado Freire
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/22997
• topic: obrigações de resultado; obrigações de meios; responsabilidade civil contratual; presunção de culpa; médico; paciente; obligations of means; obligations of result; private contractual liability; presumed guilty; doctor; patient; Direito

The distinction between obligations of means and obligations of result first arose in the French legal order, having been gradually accepted afterwards in other legal orders, including the Portuguese. However, the incorporation of the means/result dichotomy in our country was not immediate and there are still some that reject it. Still, most of the national academic writings and judicial decisions lean towards accepting this distinction. The acceptance of this summa divisio of private obligations doesn’t ignore the legal consequences it entails. One of them, which will be dealt with here, relates to the problem of the allocation of the burden of proof in contractual liability which, in broad strokes, is defined as: if the case concerns an obligation of result, the guilt of the debtor in the breach of the obligation is legally presumed via the application of article 799, para. 1, of the Portuguese Civil Code; however, if the case concerns a breach of an obligation of means, the creditor would be responsible of demonstrating the debtor guilt, without the application of said article 799, para. 1, of the Civil Code. The objective of this dissertation is to assert if the means/result dichotomy may or must influence the allocation of the burden of proof of guilt in private contractual liability procedures. To that effect, we opted to use the example of medical liability concerning the breach of the doctor’s contractual obligations in a doctorpatient contractual relationship, due to a recent increase in accountability of liberal professionals. This is a prime example of obligations of means.