An act of God, also called damnum fatale, is a legal term for an event caused by natural forces, such as severe weather or a natural disaster, for which no person can be held legally responsible or liable for the resulting loss. In contract law it may excuse performance when an unforeseeable natural event makes fulfilling an obligation impossible, under the related doctrine of frustration of contract, applied when neither party is at fault. In tort and delict law, courts treat an act of God as an event involving no human agency that is not realistically possible to guard against and that results directly and exclusively from natural causes, while in insurance it functions either as an exception to liability, as under the Hague-Visby Rules for maritime shipping, or as an insured peril covered by a policy. The concept is distinct from a force majeure clause, though the two often overlap in the wording of contracts. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Classification
Doctrine Category Core PrincipleAn unforeseeable natural phenomenon for which no person is held legally responsible 2 Connections
In Area Of Law
Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Act of God
an event caused by no direct human action for which individual persons are not responsible; may amount to an exception to liability in contractsView the Source 2. Act of God (Wikipedia)
Tort law, England and Wales subsectionQuote, Tort law, England and Wales subsection
An act of God is an unforeseeable natural phenomenon
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