Genesis of Harm and Losses in Civil Law Doctrine. The Factor of European Science

Abstract

The works of the first Russian jurists on the problem of compensation for damages in civil law are not sufficiently used in scientific works on this topic. This article can fill in the gaps and be of interest to specialists in this field of research. The author has studied and compared the main works on civil law compensation published before the revolution of 1917. It was found that the science of civil law has moved away from the consideration of universal claims for damages as a remedy and focused on the interpretation of damages as a sanction for an offense. Modern authors repeat the four-level structure of consideration of compensation cases adopted and developed in the Soviet period and the influence of the following conditions: illegality, causality, guilt, proven material damage, lost profit. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to return to the ideas that existed before the Russian Revolution and use them to improve the existing theory of compensation for damages and losses.Russian pre-Soviet civil law initially proceeded from the concept of responsibility only for behavior, since the category of «illegal actions» was introduced in Article 684 of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. Due to the developing industry, separate laws provided for payment as the equivalent of property losses for any material damage from dangerous activities, that is, for the materialized risk. In the Draft civil code of the Russian Empire, branched norms on responsibility for lawful actions appeared. A proper scientific generalization of this approach and phenomenon has not yet been made. The Civil Code of the Russian Federation has a norm on compensation for damage due to lawful actions, when it is specified in the law, but not on recovery of damages.