Care and diligence as the criteria for determining guilt or innocence in the contractual delinquency

Identifying the grounds for the civil liability incurrence has always aroused a considerable interest both of the civilists and the practitioners. It is civil law, where the statutory provision that the absence of guilt is proved by a person who violated an obligation (paragraph 2 of Article 401 of the RF Civil Code) is of interest. Therefore, the presumption of guilt enshrined in civil legislation due to the established civilistic tradition cannot but attract attention and still remains relevant for the research. The paper studies the criteria of the state of innocence in breach of an obligation proposed by the legislator. Such a state is defined through the use of the terms “care” and “diligence” in the law. Since there are no clear definitions of careful and diligent behavior in the RF Civil Code, one can conclude from paragraph 1 of Article 401 of the RF Civil Code that the degree of care and discretion depends on the nature of an obligation and the course of events at which a person must take all measures available in the situation to perform an obligation properly. The criteria of the state of innocence in breach of an obligation become the subject of the research. The author of this paper attempts to analyze and consider point by point the wording of Article 401 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation concerning the criteria for determining the innocence of a person who violated a civil obligation. Categories and terms analyzed in the paper are rather common in the law enforcement practice, so in the study, the author relies both on the provisions of the RF Civil Code and on legal acts on a given issue. As a result of the study of the specified criteria of innocence, the author concluded that their somewhat abstract and subjectively evaluative nature does not allow today to achieve uniformity in the understanding and application of this provision of civil legislation.