Quality Certification: a Civil Law Perspective

Quality certification provides a third-party guarantee of the credibility of e business entity, therefore representing an effective tool to reduce information asymmetry and to give market assurance. And yet at the same time, quality certification has become a source of information asymmetry because if its technical nature and intrinsic complexity as well as the consequent lack of knowledge and understanding by the consumers. In an information society, the quality certification bodies constitute a paradigmatic hypothesis to verify the responsibilities of those who disseminate false or erroneous information in the field of their professional activities. The issue of non-truthfulness of quality certifications should be examined at two levels: the damage inflicted on the certified business entity, leading to a contractual responsibility, and the damage caused to a third party. In these last case, it discussed the possibility to configure a contractual or an non-contractual liability.