The dissertation is devoted to the definition of the legal nature, features, grounds and conditions of obligations to compensate for damage caused by emergencies, as well as the development of proposals and recommendations for improving the legal mechanisms for regulating these obligations.
It is established that tortious obligations to compensate for damage caused by an emergency should be considered as a legal relationship between the person who caused the damage (the person directly responsible and the one who should be liable without fault if there is a sufficient causal link between the emergency and its activities or in the case of damage by lawful acts outside the tortious obligations) and the victim.
It is substantiated that the objective conditions for the occurrence of the obligation to compensate for the damage caused by the emergency situation will be illegal behavior (which may be expressed in a combination of objective and subjective illegality or characterized only by the latter), the damage and causationlink between such behavior and harm.
It is concluded that the causal link between the wrongful acts of a person and the occurrence of an emergency may be exclusively indirect and depend on the simultaneous presence of two interrelated factors: 1) the occurrence of a specific dangerous event of natural, man-made, social or military nature; caused by illegal actions (in objective and/or subjective aspects); 2) determination in the order established by the current legislation of the situation which has developed as a result of occurrence of such dangerous event, as that corresponding to signs and criteria of an emergency situation.
It is proved that the guilt of legal entities in emergencies occurs through the prism of the guilt of their specific employees, including those responsible for fire protection, safety, operation of certain systems in enterprises, institutions and organizations, as well as employees who are inflictors of harm even though they do not perform any administrative, control or other similar functions.
Key words: emergency, compensation, tort, lawful conduct, fault, objects (sources) of increased danger, dangerous event, wrongfulness of act, emergency response, civil offense, force majeure, incident, civil protection.
