The French classification of heads of bodily injury damage, never made binding by any statute yet applied by every court.
The Dintilhac schedule divides bodily injury into some twenty distinct heads along two crossing axes: the nature of the harm, economic or non-economic, and its timing, before or after medical consolidation. It covers medical expenses, present and then future loss of earnings, third party care, effect on career, temporary and then permanent functional deficit, pain endured, and the aesthetic, amenity, sexual and family-founding heads. Its practical value is twofold: it makes awards comparable from one court to another, and it prevents one head being compensated twice under two names, which was common before. It also drives the mechanics of social security recovery, which has proceeded head by head only since the 2006 reform. Its authority is remarkable in its origin: no statute ever imposed it, and it spread on the sole strength of how well it was built.
The working group chaired by Judge Jean-Pierre Dintilhac delivered its report in July 2005. The French social security funding act for 2007, passed on December 21, 2006, drew the consequence by requiring third party payer recovery to proceed head by head, which mechanically raised the share going to the victim on the personal heads.
postes de préjudice corporel, classification Dintilhac