The path leading to the enactment of the Hungarian Railway Act of 1874 and the beginning of the codification of strict liability

Abstract

The development of modern Hungarian strict liability is closely tied to the emergence of the railways, which created new types of technical and social risks and made the regulation of liability on an objective basis increasingly urgent. Although the Hungarian reform era abolished feudal customary law, but private law codification failed, so that development of risks were temporarily determined by the Austrian ABGB during the period of neo-abolitionism, which, although it was an unwanted foreign law, was able to fill the temporary codification gap. The independent domestic development of strict liability rules could only begin after the Reconciliation, when the combined effects of railway accidents and social pressure led to the creation of the 1874 Act XVIII on Liability for Death or Bodily Injury Caused by Railways. This Railways Liability Act, modelled on the Prussian and Austrian models, introduced strict liability determined three narrow grounds for exemption from liability and was to govern other enterprises involving encreased danger for some 80 years. Although the law was short and general, it allowed the courts to apply the strict liability regime in a flexible, law-developing way, in particular as regards the content of the property damage and the grounds for exemption from liability. Thus, the Railway Act not only acquired a prominent role in judicial practice, but also laid the modern foundations of strict liability which are still valid today.