Attributing liability to the building contractor

The contractor is liable for material damage arising from lack of skill, lack of professional or technical competence, negligence or breach of obligations, whether legal or contractual.

The contractor is not liable solely for its own acts or omissions, but also for those of the natural or legal persons who depend on it; this includes its employees and also subcontractors on the works, for whose acts or omissions the contractor will be liable if it was the one who hired them, unless the subcontractor was chosen by the client commissioning the works.  The contractor is also liable for damage caused by deficiencies in construction products purchased or accepted by it. It is not merely that the damage in question may be attributed to the contractor if it supplied the materials; even if they were supplied by any other party involved (for example, the developer), the contractor will be liable – even for latent defects in the materials – if it accepted them, that is, if it agreed to their use in the works and raised no objection.

However, the fact that the contractor is liable for the work of third parties (workers, subcontractors, material suppliers) does not exclude the liability of those third parties for their own acts.