Tortious liability of legal entities

Abstract

The history of tortious acts had known individuals as the only entities who, through their specific actions, performed the different types of legal dishonesty. There could be punished the person who, by taking an action or by its omission, produced a prohibited consequence. However, the development of industrialization and the expansion of economic activity have led to the establishment of legal or business entities. They marched in different types of legal relationships being based on the desire for profit. In this context, there appeared the first forms of illegal activities performed by legal entities in the financial sphere. The final consequence of illegal actions taken by legal entities was reflected in causing extremely large damage being beyond the one which could be made by people as subjects of tort liability. Regarding the fact that law is a faithful companion of social events, it is natural that there were attempts of a legal regulation of the activities of legal entities as the answer to their illicit conduct. Hence, the tort liability of legal entities may be divided into: misdemeanor liability, economic leap responsibility and criminal liability. Last decade there was, for the first time, introduced criminal liability of legal entities in Serbia, by which our country was classified among legally regulated European countries. However, this does not exclude their liability for violations and economic crimes as special forms of tort liability. Starting from the previously mentioned facts, the author wishes to point out the basic elements of all three forms of tort liability of legal entities in our legal system. The order of the presentation will be aligned with the time of their introduction into our positive law. Therefore, first there will be said something about the misdemeanor, then about the economic leap and criminal liability of legal entities.