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FAQ

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What is civil liability?

The bases of emergence of civil liability are:

a loss event (material or immaterial damage);
an unlawful act;
a cause-and-effect relationship between the act and the loss suffered, i.e. the first brought about the other;
existence of guilt, i.e. the person causing the loss must be guilty of the loss.

If any of those four prerequisites is not fulfilled, there will be no civil liability. For instance, if someone slips on the stairs and breaks a leg, the civil liability lies with the owner of the house who must indemnify the damage, because the four aforementioned conditions have been fulfilled:

the person suffered losses (treatment expenses, pay foregone);
the owner of the house must take care of the stairs and ensure the safety of the stairs; the owner failed to do that, thus acting unlawfully;
slipping was caused due to poor maintenance of the stairs - there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the loss and the unlawful behaviour;
the owner of the house knew or should have known that the stairs were dangerous, as a result of which the owner's failure to act contains the elements of guilt.