I. The General Clause
Tortious liability in Bulgaria rests on a single general clause: Article 45 of the Obligations and Contracts Act (Закон за задълженията и договорите, ЗЗД) provides that everyone who has wrongfully caused damage to another is obliged to redress it. Unlike common law systems, which build liability from a series of distinct torts, Bulgarian law — in the civil law tradition — applies one general principle across the great majority of claims for damage caused outside a contractual relationship, supplemented by a small number of specific provisions addressing particular situations.
II. The Elements of a Claim
A claim under Article 45 requires four elements, each of which the claimant must in principle establish:
- A wrongful act or omission — conduct that breaches a general duty not to harm others, or a specific legal obligation.
- Damage — an actual, provable loss, whether financial or non-financial.
- Causation — a sufficient causal link between the wrongful conduct and the damage claimed.
- Fault — intent or negligence on the part of the person who caused the damage.
Bulgarian law significantly eases the claimant's position on the last element: once the wrongful act and the damage are established, fault is presumed under Article 45(2), and the burden shifts to the defendant to prove the absence of fault. This reversal is one of the more consequential features of Bulgarian tort practice, and it means that a defendant who simply denies wrongdoing without affirmatively disproving fault is at a material disadvantage.
III. Types of Recoverable Damage
Bulgarian law recognises both pecuniary damage (имуществени вреди) — quantifiable financial loss, including both the loss actually suffered and lost profit that would otherwise have been earned — and non-pecuniary damage (неимуществени вреди), commonly referred to as moral damages, covering pain, suffering and other harm that does not correspond to a financial loss. Article 52 of the Act leaves the quantification of moral damages to the court's discretion, assessed in equity on the facts of the case, which makes prior comparable awards — rather than a fixed statutory scale — the principal reference point in practice.
IV. Liability Without the Claimant Proving the Defendant's Own Conduct
Alongside the general clause, the Act imposes liability in specific situations where the person answerable for the damage is not the one who directly caused it, or where fault is effectively presumed from the circumstances rather than requiring separate proof:
Liability for employees (Article 49)
An employer is liable for damage caused by an employee in the course of, or in connection with, the performance of the work assigned to them. This liability does not depend on any fault of the employer's own — it exists because the employer benefits from the employee's work — though the employer retains a right of recourse against the employee who actually caused the damage.
Liability for things (Article 50)
The owner, or another person who has a thing in their keeping, is liable for damage the thing causes, even without personal fault, unless the damage resulted from force majeure or the act of the injured party or a third person. This provision reaches a wide range of situations — a defective structure, a falling object, an escaping animal — where establishing exactly how the damage occurred would otherwise be disproportionately difficult for the injured party.
V. Multiple Tortfeasors
Where damage is caused jointly by more than one person, Article 53 makes them jointly and severally liable to the injured party, who may recover the full amount from any one of them and leave the tortfeasors to settle their respective contributions among themselves. This allocation of risk favours the claimant and is a material consideration in deciding whom to sue where more than one party may have contributed to the same harm.
VI. Time Limits
Tort claims are generally subject to the same five-year limitation period that applies to civil claims generally, running from the date the claimant knew or ought to have known of both the damage and the identity of the person responsible, subject to an absolute long-stop of ten years from the date of the wrongful act regardless of when the damage or the tortfeasor's identity came to light.