§ 30. How much compensation (erstatning) you can get from the tradesperson (håndverker)

This section says how much compensation you can claim, and what reduces the amount. The starting point is that you are covered for your financial loss. The law mentions, among other things, lost earnings and expenses as examples. The loss must be of a kind that the tradesperson could reasonably foresee as a possible consequence of the circumstance. Damage and costs that were far beyond what he could have imagined are not covered.

The second subsection gives you a responsibility yourself. You must do what is reasonable to keep the loss down. If you fail to do so, you must bear the part of the loss that such measures would have saved. Example: the consumer could easily have prevented the loss from growing, but did not. A corresponding part of the claim then falls away.

The third subsection allows the liability to be reduced. This can happen if the compensation becomes unreasonably heavy for the tradesperson. One then looks at how large the loss is compared with losses that usually arise in similar cases, and at the other circumstances.

The fourth subsection draws a line against the business world. The compensation rules in this chapter do not apply to losses you suffer in your own business activity. They are made for consumers, and not for losses that arise in running a company.

The section builds on § 28, which gives the actual right to compensation for delay (forsinkelse) and defect (mangel), and on § 29 on damage while an item (ting) is with the service provider. § 40 on liability for cancellation (avbestilling) and § 42 on suspension of work (stansing) also refer here, so the rules on calculating compensation matter beyond the consumer's own claim.