If the specific item that several solidary debtors owe together is destroyed through one debtor's fault, are all of them still liable, or just the one at fault?

One debtor's fault binds all of them

Article 1221 of the Civil Code states it without qualification: If there was fault on the part of any one of them, all shall be responsible to the creditor, for the price and the payment of damages and interest, without prejudice to their action against the guilty or negligent debtor. The creditor does not have to identify who mishandled the thing, and an innocent debtor cannot answer a demand by pointing at his companion. Solidarity that survives only while things go smoothly would be worth very little, so the law keeps the whole group facing the creditor and pushes the argument about blame into a separate accounting between the debtors.

What the creditor can now demand

Once the specific thing is gone, the obligation stops being about delivery and becomes about money. The article fixes the measure as the price of the thing plus damages and interest, so the creditor is claiming its value rather than a substitute item, and a debtor cannot insist on supplying something similar instead. Value is proved, not asserted, which is why invoices, the contract price, appraisals and insurance records become the centre of the dispute. Damages and interest sit on top of the price, so the exposure of an innocent co-debtor can exceed what he thought he had underwritten.

No fault means the obligation simply ends

The opening sentence is the exception people should check first: If the thing has been lost or if the prestation has become impossible without the fault of the solidary debtors, the obligation shall be extinguished. A determinate thing destroyed by a genuine fortuitous event, with no negligence by anyone on the debtor side, ends the obligation rather than converting it into a money claim. That is why the real fight in these cases is almost never about solidarity — it is about whether the loss was truly nobody's doing, and about who had custody when it happened.

Delay closes the fortuitous-event escape

Article 1221 also provides that where the loss or impossibility comes about through a fortuitous event after one of the solidary debtors has incurred in delay through judicial or extrajudicial demand by the creditor, the rule for fault applies instead. So a demand letter served on any one debtor changes the position of all of them: after that, an accident that would otherwise have extinguished the obligation leaves the group owing the price, damages and interest. The date on the demand, and proof that it was actually received, are frequently the documents that decide the case.

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 1221 — Loss of the Thing in Solidary Obligations
• Civil Code, Article 1216 — Creditor May Sue Any Solidary Debtor
• Civil Code, Article 1217 — Payment by a Solidary Debtor; Reimbursement
• Civil Code, Article 1222 — Defenses of a Solidary Debtor