Reduction of Property Liability: Problem Setting

Abstract

The article deals with an issue of reduction of liability in the civil law. The Civil Code of Russian Federation includes handful rules, which allow the court to reduce liability of a debtor. However, such rules are applicable to different events and there are no universal rules applied to all events of property (economical) liability. For instance the court ought to reduce liability of a debtor in case both a creditor and the debtor are failed an obligation as well as the court is entitled to reduce liability of the debtor when the creditor facilitated increasing an amount of his losses. The court reduces an amount of penalties in event of such the amount is obviously not equal to the result of aftermath that an obligation was failed by debtor. In cases related to damnification the court has the right to reduce liability of tortfeasor based on his property status unless they caused damage intentionally. Yet there are many rules of property liability simultaneously do not allow to reduce such liability, for instance liability for violation of intellectual rights, rights of consumers (when a seller refuses to fulfil a demand of a consumer on his own free will), etc. Since there are sort of such rules, the court occasionally forces to apply the art. 333 of the Civil Code to Russian Federation, meanwhile the legal practice of applying this article is inconsistent. The reason of that inconsistency is there are no legal rules of reducing liability which regard all types and events of property (economical) liability. However the legal practice has a wide experience and knows many methods of reducing property (economical) liability. The author points out that it is time to formulate universal rules of reducing liability applied to all events of property (economical) liability on the basis of scattered rules of the Civil Code of Russian Federation and legal practice of its application.