Dalla spirale difettosa ai prodotti intelligenti : integrità, autodeterminazione e danno alla persona nel sistema della product liability europea

The article examines the evolution of recoverable damage in European product liability law, taking as its starting point a request for a preliminary ruling currently pending before the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning a defective intrauterine contraceptive device and the resulting unintended pregnancy. It argues that personal injury should be identified neither with the mere presence of the defective device within the body nor with pregnancy as such. Instead, personal injury should be reconstructed through a plural understanding of personal integrity, in which self-determination contributes to identifying the concrete dimension of the protected interest. This approach also guides the causal selection of recoverable pecuniary consequences. The analysis then turns to Directive (EU) 2024/2853, focusing on harm to the person in its non-material dimensions, particularly those connected with the impairment of psychological integrity and the destruction or corruption of data. It concludes by advocating a conception of product- related damage that remains typological and selective, but is also personalistic and post-material, and thus capable of responding to the risks generated both by the traditional twentieth-century product and by new intelligent systems capable of learning and evolving.