Summary

During the time that the civil code of the Estonian SSR was in effect we understood force majeure primarily as a force of nature ungoverned by human will. The definition in the Law of Obligations Act, however, permits force majeure to include many more conditions and events. Filling the concept of force majeure with a new content in the Law of Obligations Act does not just mean changing the meaning of a term but also replacing one doctrine of contractual legal responsibility with another. For this reason, the article also analyses the content of force majeure according to the old Civil Code Act and the resultant Supreme Court practice. In addition, the article seeks guidelines which would enable an answer to the question: what is force majeure in the meaning of Law of Obligations Act or when is a debtor not responsible for the non-performance of his obligations? In seeking these guidelines, the author of the article compares the regulations in the Law of Obligations Act with the provisions dealing with force majeure in the Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods, the principles of European contract law and the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts, since these sources were used as ‘model’ laws in the preparation of the applicable part of the Law of Obligations Act, and it was using their example that the principle of culpable responsibility, as known in the Civil Code Act, was replaced with excusable responsibility.