within Cities and Other Settlements» No. 559-99-p of 29.02.2012 (VRU, 2012a). In the
absence of modern methods, the Temporary Methodology for Determining the Amount
of Damage from Breach of Economic Contracts, approved by the Order of the State
Property Fund of Ukraine «On Approval of the Methodology for Determining the Damage
and Amount of Damage Caused to Enterprises, Institutions and Organizations of All
Forms of Ownership as a Result of Destruction and Damage to Their Property in
Connection with the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation, as well as Loss of Profit
from the Impossibility or Obstacles to Conducting Economic Activity» (No. z1522-22 of
18.10.2022), may also serve as a guide. An additional element of the specialty of
commercial law is the regime of double compensation for damage caused by violations
of competition law, enshrined in part 2 of Article 55 of the Law of Ukraine «On Protection
of Economic Competition» (VRU, 2024), which is completely alien to civil law. Thus,
commercial law forms an autonomous compensatory mechanism within which
compensation for damage acquires the characteristics of a special tort. This mechanism
is not isolated from civil law, but it is also not reduced to its provisions, which leads to
its consideration as a separate, institutionally justified form of civil liability in the field of
business.
In addition, another conceptually complex problem, which is reflected in paragraph 9 of
the Explanation of the Supreme Arbitration Court of Ukraine «On some issues of practice
of resolving disputes related to compensation for damage» No. v_215800-94 of
29.12.2007 (VRU, 2007c), is the issue of determining the legal nature of damage caused
in the field of business as a result of non-enforcement of a court decision. This issue is
of practical and methodological importance, as it affects the limits of application of both
tort and obligation constructions in commercial law. Therefore, first of all, it should be
emphasized that a court decision as a legal fact may be recognized as the basis for a new
obligation only in exceptional situations. These are, in particular, cases of restitution
under an invalid disputed contract (Article 208 of the Commercial Code of Ukraine), when
the court obliges the parties to return what they received under the contract; situations
of recognizing a contract as concluded by a court decision (Article 187, Article 219 of the
Commercial Code of Ukraine), as well as a number of other specific cases (VRU, 2025b).
In such situations, the court decision does create a new obligation that did not exist
before it was made. In most cases, however, judicial acts do not create new obligations,
but rather ensure their enforcement by giving them the form of an enforcement
document. For example, a decision to recover damages states the fact of a violation and
determines its scope and procedure for compensation, while the obligation to compensate
arises on the basis of a preliminary fact of an offense. This is further supported by the
fact that, even prior to the court's ruling, the debtor is entitled to voluntarily make up
the damages.
Based on this, it seems methodologically incorrect to define non-enforcement of a court
decision as a tort. Within the meaning of Chapter 82 of the Civil Code of Ukraine (Article
1166), tort damage results from the violation of absolute rights of a person protected by
the general prohibition of harm. In the case of non-enforcement of a court decision, it is
not a violation of an absolute right, but rather the improper fulfillment of a specific
obligation. Therefore, the legal basis for the creditor's claims in such a situation should
be sought not in tort provisions, but in the rules on liability for breach of obligations -