This study offers insight into the consequences of the amendment of the liability
rules and the new conceptual approach adopted by the Hungarian Civil Code of 2013
(hereinafter HCC), focusing on the strict liability rule for highly dangerous activities.
Ten years have already passed allowing some ex-post assessments of the changed legislative
approach and its direct and indirect effects on the interpretation of the statutory
provisions. Under section 6:535(1) of the HCC ‘a person carrying out hazardous activities
shall compensate for the resulting damage’. The HCC applies an open rule (Generalklausel)
to establish strict liability for ultrahazardous (highly dangerous) activities, leaving
undefined what kind of activities are to be considered highly dangerous. Neither the
liable person (i.e., the operator), nor the scope of the ultrahazardous activity is
defined by law on a case-by-case basis, and in many areas, this form of liability
is often underpinned by mandatory third-party liability insurance schemes. These facts
always grant to this strict liability rule a significant proliferation and wide appeal
in the practice, a position that has changed due to the highlighted amendments of
both the contractual and extracontractual liability regimes. After a brief introduction
to the historical and theoretical aspects of the development of the Hungarian strict
liability rule, the article scrutinizes the exclusion of concurrent claims for damages
(i.e., the non-cumul rule), highlights the changing synergies between contractual
and extracontractual liability rules, and analyses the minor amendments of the system
of strict liability rules with theirs far-reaching impact: such as the possible consequences
of the statutory defined notion of operator and the recently amended liability rules
on collision of wild animals and motor vehicles.
