1st Edition

Liability Law for Failed Contract Negotiations A Comparative, Structural, and Historical Analysis

By Tom Hick Copyright 2026
230 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

230 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book provides the European structure of liability for failed contract negotiations through a comparative lens, with wider lessons for an international context. The book demonstrates that all the analyzed legal systems, in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, can be best understood through a binary structure in their approach to pre-contractual liability, or culpa in... Read more

Introduction

 

Part I: Structure Of Liability for Contract Negotiations and Obligations to Contract

1. Function of Pre-Contractual Liability

2. Structure of Pre-Contractual Liability

 

Part II: Liability for Contract Negotiations

3. Structure and Functionning of Liability for Contract Negotiations

4. Sanctions

5. Findings

 

Part III: Obligation to Negotiate or to Contract

6. Circumventing Causal Uncertainty

7. The Obligation to Negotiate or to Contract

8. Alternative: Obliegenheit to Contract

9. Summary

 

Conclusion

Biography

Tom Hick is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for comparative and international private law in Hamburg. He conducts research on comparative law of obligations, comparative succession law, and private law theory with a focus on questions relating to social justice and sustainability. Previously, he has been a research and teaching assistant at the Institute for the Law of Obligations at the KU Leuven, Belgium, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 2024. He also is a member of various international research groups and of the Friday Group, a Belgian think-tank striving to integrate young Belgian citizens into the public debate on important societal issues.