Georgiy A. Kurenkov

The task of overcoming the imbalance that arose as a result of the violation by one participant of civil law relations of the subjective rights of another person is designed to solve the institute of compensation for damages, which has gone through many stages of development before its final formalization into the current legal structure, which in this article is proposed to analyze as the example of French legal doctrine. Civil law institutions do not always work like a shagreen skin and not all the participants in civil turnover can get the desired result when activating the procedure for compensation for damage caused by the actions of the violator, therefore, the discussion about choosing the optimal form of compensation for harm remains relevant today. This brief review, conducted through a comparison of the expediency of choosing between monetary compensation or fulfillment of an obligation to compensate for harm in kind, allows you to feel, very well not only the semantics of the institute of compensation for damages, but also to see the main trends in the development of the theory of civil liability in France. Due to the fact that the adoption by the legislator, judicial practice and later by the doctrine of the decision on the choice of performance in kind or pecuniary indemnity as a priority in compensation for harm is of a fluctuating nature and is associated with socio-economic circumstances in a specific historical period, and, therefore, cannot have the features of a long-term practice.