Complaints under the Purchase Contract after the Recodification of Czech Civil Law

Abstract

One of the objectives of the new codification governing complaints of defects under the New Civil Code (NCC) was to abolish the dualism of regimes set for non-commercial and commercial purchase contract, regulated separately by the Civil Code 1964 and Commercial Code 1992. Before the NCC entered into force, the Czech law has two separate legal regimes governing the rights of the purchaser concerning defects of the subject of the purchase. There was always a differentiation between the rights of the buyer under the Civil code and rights under the Commercial Code. The Civil Code governed contracts in which one party was a consumer or an entrepreneur who, however, was not acting in performance of the business. The Commercial Code, by contrast, governed contracts concluded between entrepreneurs in the performance of their business. The New Civil Code introduced a uniform scheme for the application of the rights for defects, which is based on the legal rules contained in the former Commercial Code.The present paper analyses the statutory regulation of rights for defects of the goods sold. Using the methods of functional analysis and legally formalistic comparison it examines the modes of their application – both from the perspective of a trader and from the perspective of the customer and/or of the public inspection body.The first assessment and reviews of the implication of the new legislation in practical terms and by the case law suggest that the in meeting the objective desired by the NCC – to increase the transparency of the procedure for complaints – the new legislation stacked in the middle of the way. It is obvious that the new rules respect the former régime of commercial contracts. The business sphere has undoubtedly welcomed this feature of the legal regime as the merchandisers are familiar with this rules. The second issue is, however, how this modification in the general regulation meets the expectations of the consumers to provide sufficient legal certainty in consumer disputes running across the Member States of the European Union.