§ 52. Which losses does the compensation cover?
The compensation (erstatning) must cover your entire financial loss (expenses, price difference, lost earnings). You only get compensation for losses the shop could reasonably have foreseen. Personal injury (personskade) and losses in a business are not covered here.
Machine-translated from Norwegian. The Norwegian text is the one that applies. Read the original in Norwegian.Norsk English العربية Polski Українська
The text of the law (unofficial translation)
Compensation for breach of contract (kontraktsbrudd) by one party shall correspond to the financial loss, including expenses, price difference and lost profit, which the other party has suffered as a result of the breach of contract. However, this only applies to losses which one could reasonably have foreseen as a possible consequence of the breach of contract.
The compensation does not include a. losses resulting from personal injury b. losses in the consumer's (forbruker) business activities.
What does this mean?
The principle: You should be put in the position you would have been in if the shop had delivered perfectly at the agreed time. But there is a limit: The loss must be "foreseeable" — the shop must have been able to foresee that it could happen.
A taxi receipt for taking a faulty washing machine back: foreseeable. A coffee cup thrown at the wall in anger over a delayed iPhone: not foreseeable.
Two exceptions: Personal injury (covered by the Product Liability Act (produktansvarsloven)) and losses in your own business (not covered by this Act).
Example
Håkon buys a car battery that short-circuits. He needs a tow truck (NOK 2,000 excess) and a train ticket home (NOK 400). Both are direct, foreseeable losses after a total battery failure. The shop compensates NOK 2,400.
Common mistakes
- Demanding NOK 10,000 as a "plaster on the wound" for frustration — mere frustration is not a financial loss
- Not documenting the loss with receipts
What should you do?
Make a calculation. Write down exactly which expenses arose directly because of the fault. Attach pictures of the receipts. Send everything together to the shop with a reference to § 52.