REDUCTION OF LIABILITY FOR BREACH OF COMMERCIAL CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS

Abstract

In this article, the author expresses his own point of view on the grounds for reducing the amount of liability for breach of economic contractual obligations.

The opinion is given that, with a modern approach to understanding the legal phenomenon of a penalty, the application of such legal liability as a penalty should not lead to an excessive financial burden for the guilty party and to a source of enrichment for the party that suffered from the offense. The party that suffered the offense has the right to compensation from the offender, but such compensation must correspond to the nature of the offense, the amount of losses suffered by the injured party, the amount of the breached obligation under the contract and must not be excessive.

It is stated that the property status of the parties is one of the circumstances that are of significant importance and may be the basis for the court to reduce the amount of liability for breach of an economic obligation. However, not every time the property status of the offender may be the basis for applying a reduction in the amount of liability. When the deterioration of the property status of the offender is associated with the actions of the injured party, then we can talk about the presence in such cases of grounds for the court to apply a reduction in liability in the form of a penalty for breach of a contractual economic obligation. In particular, when the property and financial status of such a seller has significantly deteriorated precisely as a result of a systematic or single gross violation by the relevant buyer of his monetary obligations to the seller regarding payment for previously delivered goods, previously provided services, previously performed work under other contracts between these parties, then the court has grounds to reduce the penalty.

The author defends the position that in economic legal relations, the application of a penalty should not have the purpose of punishing the offender, but should have the purpose of compensation, since one of the principles of economic (civil) law is compensation for a person's property losses caused by an offense committed by another person.

The author also expresses the opinion that the court may also reduce the amount of annual interest by analogy with the law or by analogy with the law, in cases where there are grounds for reducing the amount of the penalty.