Ruling of the Constitutional Court of 15 December 2015, File Ref. No.: I. ÚS 1587/15
In its ruling, the Constitutional Court dealt with the accident in which two little girls, accompanied by their father, were seriously injured at a pedestrian crossing.
Lower courts had decided that the driver of the vehicle that caused serious injuries to the girls, as well as the girls’ father who neglected supervision when crossing at the pedestrian crossing, were each half to blame.
The Constitutional Court, however, did not agree with the view of the lower courts and ruled that “the purpose of parental responsibility has significant implications for determining whether in the case in question the harm suffered by the child falls within the protective purpose of parental responsibility. In the situation in question, it is a requirement to protect children from harm caused to them as a result of carelessness in traffic that would not have been caused to an intellectually and volitionally mature person. Thus, if a minor child who is supervised acts fully in accordance with the law and, in a given situation, behaves in a manner that an average legally competent person would behave and yet suffers harm in traffic, the nexus of illegality between the breach of duties of the supervising person and the harm is not met in such a situation.”
Therefore, based on the above, parental responsibility was not breached. However, the consequences of the accident must be faced by each party personally ...
