Conséquences anormales des accidents médicaux non fautifs : jurisprudence du Conseil d’État()

Compensation for no-fault medical accidents to professionals or establishments is provided for by article L. 1142-1 of the public health code, created by the law of March 4, 2002 relating to the rights of patients and the quality of the health system. It indicates the conditions of accountability, clinical criteria and severity. Among the clinical criteria “a medical accident (…) gives the right to compensation for damages (…) in the name of national solidarity, when (…) they have had abnormal consequences for the patient in view of his condition as well as the foreseeable evolution of it (…)”. The jurisdictional orders have had to characterize this “abnormality of the consequences”. According to the jurisprudence of the Conseil d’État of December 12, 2014 the condition of abnormality is always “satisfied when the medical act entailed consequences significantly more serious than those to which the patient was exposed in a sufficiently probable way in the absence of treatment”. And if this is not the case, “they cannot be regarded as abnormal unless, under the conditions in which the act was performed, the occurrence of damage presented a low probability; that thus, they cannot be regarded as abnormal with regard to the state of the patient when the gravity of this state led to practicing an act involving high risks whose realization is at the origin of the damage”. The Conseil d’État specified in 2019 that a probability of occurrence of 3% was a low probability.