Background
On 14 April 2015, a pedestrian was struck and killed on the TEM Motorway in Istanbul by a vehicle insured by the defendant insurance company. The deceased had entered the motorway on foot at night, attempting to cross from the right shoulder toward the central median. The deceased’s mother and siblings (the plaintiffs) filed a loss-of-support compensation claim against the insurer, initially seeking 100 Turkish lira as a nominal indefinite claim — a procedural device preserving the right to later quantify the full amount — with statutory interest running from the accident date.
Parallel criminal proceedings were conducted before the Sakarya 1st Criminal Court of First Instance (Case No. 2015/725 E. — 2016/61 K.). The Turkish Forensic Medicine Institute’s Traffic Expert Board, in its report of 17 June 2015, concluded that the deceased bore 100% of the fault for the accident and that the insured driver bore none. The criminal court acquitted the driver on 15 January 2016; the Court of Cassation’s 12th Criminal Chamber (Case No. 2020/5130 E. — 2023/3901 K.) affirmed that acquittal, which became final on 11 October 2023. The plaintiffs had themselves participated as intervening parties (katılan) in the criminal proceedings.
The Istanbul Anatolian 1st Commercial Court dismissed the civil action on 26 November 2024, reasoning that the deceased was 100% at fault and the insured driver bore no fault, thus no tortious act existed and the insurer owed no liability. The plaintiffs appealed to the Istanbul Regional Court of Appeals, arguing that under Article 74 of the Turkish Code of Obligations (TBK), a civil court is not bound by a criminal acquittal and that the trial court therefore erred by deferring entirely to the criminal proceedings.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate chamber affirmed the dismissal, but only after carefully mapping the boundary between civil-court independence and the preclusive effect of criminal judgments. The court confirmed that Article 74 TBK — which states that a civil judge is not bound by criminal-law rules on liability or by an acquittal when assessing fault — does not grant the civil court unlimited freedom to relitigate everything decided in a criminal case. The established doctrine, as reflected in numerous Court of Cassation Grand General Assembly rulings, is that while civil courts are free to reach independent conclusions on fault, its degree, causation, and damages, they remain completely bound by the criminal court’s findings on established material facts (“maddi olgular”) and on whether a prohibited act took place. Once a final criminal judgment has settled whether a particular event occurred or did not occur, civil courts may not revisit that factual determination.
Applying that framework, the chamber held that the Sakarya criminal court’s finalized judgment settled the following as material facts: the deceased entered a high-speed, one-directional motorway on foot in darkness and was entirely at fault for the collision; the insured driver was traveling lawfully in his lane and neither could have anticipated a pedestrian appearing on the motorway at night nor could have taken protective action in time. Because the plaintiffs were themselves participants in those criminal proceedings and the acquittal withstood cassation review, those factual findings had binding, conclusive-evidence status against them in any subsequent civil litigation on the same events.
Because the insured driver’s absence of fault was a settled material fact rather than merely a legal assessment of fault proportion, the insurer could not be held liable — no tortious act by the policyholder had been established. The court therefore dismissed the appeal on the merits pursuant to Article 353(1)(b)(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure (HMK) and ordered the plaintiffs to pay a residual court stamp fee of 116.60 Turkish lira. No attorney’s fee was awarded at the appellate stage, as the review was conducted on the file without a hearing.
Key Takeaways
- Article 74 TBK frees civil courts from being bound by criminal acquittals on legal assessments of fault, but it does not free them from criminal courts’ findings on factual matters — including whether a specific act occurred and whether a specific causal link existed.
- Where plaintiffs were participating parties in the criminal proceedings and the criminal judgment became final through cassation review, those factual findings constitute conclusive evidence against them in civil proceedings arising from the same accident.
- An insurer cannot be held liable for loss-of-support damages when a final criminal judgment, binding as a material-fact determination, establishes that the insured driver was entirely without fault — because the precondition of a tortious act is absent.
- Civil courts retain the power to commission independent expert reports on the degree of fault, but only where the criminal court’s findings do not establish the existence or non-existence of fault as a settled material fact.
Why It Matters
This decision offers a practical illustration of where Article 74 TBK’s civil-court independence ends and criminal-judgment preclusion begins — a distinction that regularly arises in Turkish traffic-accident litigation. Insurers and claimants alike must assess not only whether a criminal acquittal exists, but whether the acquittal rests on factual findings (which bind the civil court) or purely on criminal-law liability standards (which do not). Where victims or their survivors participated as intervening parties in criminal proceedings that ended in an acquittal based on clear factual findings, their civil prospects are substantially narrowed.
For insurance practitioners, the case reinforces that the scope of the civil court’s reopening of fault questions is limited to the legal characterisation and proportionality of fault, not to the underlying physical facts already settled by a final criminal judgment confirmed on cassation review. Plaintiffs who wish to preserve full civil-court flexibility on fault should carefully consider whether to intervene in parallel criminal proceedings, since participation may later foreclose relitigation of the factual record in the civil forum.