The article substantiates the judgment that despite the specificity of its status ("public subjects") public-law companies are participants of civil-law relations. The peculiarities of their position are conditioned by the need for the state to solve new tasks, including those related to the provision of national defense and security of the state. The work used general scientific methods of research: systemic, functional, system-structural. The authors successfully applied private-scientific: cultural, historical, sociological, statistical methods of research. The authors also used special research methods in jurisprudence: comparative-legal and formal-legal. The aim of the article is to outline key approaches to understanding the specifics of legal regulation of "public subjects" in private law. An important place is given to the analysis of the activities of PPC "Roskadastr" and PPC "Military Construction Company".