Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ Per­sons sub­ject to an au­thor­isa­tion or no­ti­fic­a­tion ob­lig­a­tion who handle patho­gen­ic or­gan­isms in a con­tained sys­tem, re­lease such or­gan­isms for ex­per­i­ment­al pur­poses or put them in­to cir­cu­la­tion without au­thor­isa­tion are li­able for any loss or dam­age that arises from such con­duct.

² The per­son re­quired to ob­tain au­thor­isa­tion is ex­clus­ively li­able for any loss or dam­age oc­ca­sioned to an ag­ri­cul­tur­al or forestry es­tab­lish­ment or cus­tom­ers of products from such es­tab­lish­ments by patho­gen­ic or­gan­isms that are au­thor­ised to be put in­to cir­cu­la­tion if the or­gan­isms:

a.

are con­tained in aux­il­i­ary agents used in ag­ri­cul­ture or forestry¹⁴²; or

b.

ori­gin­ate from such aux­il­i­ary agents.

³ In the case of li­ab­il­ity un­der para­graph 2, re­course is re­served against per­sons who have handled such or­gan­isms im­prop­erly or have oth­er­wise con­trib­uted to caus­ing or ag­grav­at­ing the loss or dam­age.

⁴ If loss or dam­age is caused by any oth­er patho­gen­ic or­gan­isms that are au­thor­ised to be put in­to cir­cu­la­tion, the per­son re­quired to ob­tain au­thor­isa­tion is li­able if the or­gan­isms are de­fect­ive. He is also li­able for any de­fect that he was un­able to de­tect ac­cord­ing to the stand­ards of sci­ence and tech­no­logy at the time that the or­gan­ism was put in­to cir­cu­la­tion.

⁵ Patho­gen­ic or­gan­isms are de­fect­ive if they do not of­fer the level of safety that any­one is en­titled to ex­pect tak­ing ac­count of all the cir­cum­stances; the fol­low­ing must be taken in­to ac­count in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

the way in which they are presen­ted to the pub­lic;

b.

the use that may reas­on­ably be ex­pec­ted;

c.

the time at which they were put in­to cir­cu­la­tion.

⁶ A product con­tain­ing patho­gen­ic or­gan­isms is not de­fect­ive simply be­cause an im­proved product has sub­sequently been put in­to cir­cu­la­tion.

⁷ The loss or dam­age must be due to the patho­gen­i­city of the or­gan­isms.

⁸ The bur­den of prov­ing a caus­al con­nec­tion lies with the per­son claim­ing dam­ages. If such proof can­not be provided with cer­tainty or if the per­son sub­ject to the bur­den can­not reas­on­ably be ex­pec­ted to present the re­quired evid­ence, the court may sat­is­fy it­self on the bal­ance of prob­ab­il­ity. The court may also or­der that the facts of the case be es­tab­lished ex of­fi­cio.

⁹ The per­son re­quired to ob­tain au­thor­isa­tion or file a re­port must also re­im­burse the costs of the re­quired and ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures that have been taken to re­con­sti­t­ute ele­ments of the en­vir­on­ment that have been des­troyed or dam­aged or to re­place such ele­ments with their equi­val­ents. If the des­troyed or dam­aged ele­ments of the en­vir­on­ment are not the sub­ject of a prop­erty right or if the per­son en­titled does not take the meas­ures re­quired in the cir­cum­stances, the right to dam­ages be­comes that of the pub­lic au­thor­ity con­cerned.

¹⁰ Any per­son who proves that the loss or dam­age was caused by force ma­jeure or by gross neg­li­gence on the part of the in­jured party or of a third party is re­lieved of li­ab­il­ity.

¹¹ Art­icles 42–47 and 49–53 of the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions¹⁴³ ap­ply.

¹² The Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons and com­munes may also be held li­able in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1–11.