L'insegnamento dello sci: responsabilità civile e assicurazione per danni ad allievi e terzi

The law 81 of 8 March 1991 (concerning the profession of ski instructors) contains the main principles by which the regional and the autonomous province Italian governments are allowed to enact second level legislation for the regulation of this tourism profession. The first chapter of the work will analyse this legislations by specifically taking into account the professional figure of the ski instructor and the other subjects who are involved in this professional service (ski schools, local and national associations of ski instructors). According to the contract of ski teaching, instructors have two main obligations: teaching and safeguarding the pupils’ safety. The latter concerns the ever more frequent civil liability issues and is dealt with by a recent judgement of the Italian Corte di Cassazione (n. 3612, 17 February 2014), according to which the pupil’s safety is solely the teacher’s responsibility, even if the instructor works for the ski school that is contractually bound to the pupil. This special “contractual” regime falling on the ski instructor was shaped after the concept of “social contact”, a third form of civil liability endorsed by the Italian Cassazione in order to give effect to the severe regime of liability descending from a contractual obligation also to relationships that by definition cannot be considered contractual (such is the case of the ski instructor, who does not enter in contractual relationship with the skier, who instead is into a contractual relationship with the ski school). The third chapter describes how the subjects operating in this field have drawn up an insurance policy covering the civil liability risk for damages affecting pupils (art. 5 d.p.r. 7th august 2012, n. 137). The insurance contract against civil liability is analysed, along with the recent Cassazione’s decision that prohibits the collateral benefit rule in case of cumulation of insurance indemnity and tort compensation (Cass., 11th June 2014, n. 13233). Furthermore, the ; secondly, it will present a concrete solution to the problems that are raised when the cause of a learner’s impairment is unknown (cass., 3th February 2011, n. 2559).