Odgovornost za štetu koju životinja prouzrokuje prema Prednacrtu Građanskog zakonika Republike Srbije

Abstract

Animals, like people, can cause damages. Who shall be held liable for it, on which basis, and who shall be obliged to compensate for it? The domestic Law on Contracts and Torts does not provide a decisive answer to the questions posed, and the multiannual judicial practice has treated animals as dangerous things for whose behaviour, as a rule, the owner, i.e. the holder, has been held liable according to the principle of objective liability. The Serbian Draft Civil Code, in principle, confirms the domestic jurisprudence practice. Taking as a starting point the amendments of French, Austrian, German and Swiss Civil Codes that qualitatively differently regulate the status of animals since animals are not any longer observed as things, but as sensitive beings, so the regulations referring to such property apply to them, unless they are not excluded with the regulations regulating their welfare. In the paper, we shed the light on liability for damage caused by animals exactly through the prism of the new approach in legal treatment of animals.