The Journal of Critical Analysis of Judicial Decisions

The Journal of Critical Analysis of Judicial Decisions

Analytical Study on Unanimous Decision No. 811 of the Supreme Court from the Perspective of the Theory of Lucrative Fault: A Comparative Examination in French Law

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Department of Specialized Law, Faculty of Law, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran
10.22034/analysis.2026.2078802.1152
Abstract
The present study analyzes the unanimous decision No. 811 of the Supreme Court of Iran to examine the foundations of the theory of profit-making fault and its adaptation to the structure of French civil law. The aforementioned decision, in requiring the seller to pay the current price of the property of the third party in the event of the invalidity of the sale, goes beyond the level of compensation for material damage and focuses on the deprivation of undue benefit from the offender. Such an orientation shows that the logic of decision 811 is inspired by the principles of distributive justice and, in practice, directs the Iranian civil liability system towards economic deterrence. This development marks a transition from traditional exchange justice to a system that aims to restore economic balance by eliminating illegitimate profit and linking individual justice and social justice. In French law, the change in the idea of ​​civil liability towards economic justice has caused the judge, faced with behaviors that create illegitimate profit, to order the return of that profit so that the incentive to exploit the rules of law is eliminated. This approach, centered on the principle of balance and fairness, has transformed compensation from a personal form into a social duty, and thus has removed civil justice from a passive state and placed it in a deterrent position. In Imami jurisprudence, the principle of non-profit guarantee and the principle of "to whom the goods belong" confirm this foundation and state that any unjustified benefit creates an obligation to compensate. A comparison between the two legal systems of Iran and France reveals that both are moving towards establishing economic justice and preventing unjustified profit, and the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court No. 811 can be considered the first step in accepting the idea of ​​pecuniary fault in the Iranian legal system. The innovation of this research is crystallized in presenting an applied model for reviewing the law of civil liability and explaining the role of the judge in the deprivation of unjustified benefit.
Keywords

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