Abstract
The Civil Code, which was adopted in 2012 in the Czech Republic and came into effect on January 1, 2014, brought a significant change into the Czech law. It newly establishes and redefines a number of legal institutes and legal concepts.
One of them is the issue of negligence and the presumption of negligence which are closely intertwined. Despite the commonly shared opinion, that the negligence had to be presumed, no one could be sure, whether the Civil Code substantively defines what does the negligence in fact mean.
In particular, as soon as the Civil Code lays down that something "shall be presumed" one has to ask whether it is at the same time stipulated "what shall be presumed", i.e. what the negligence in private law shall be. This question prompted the authors to ask what the negligence applies to and what it includes in private law, and whether the violation of legal duties as such could be understood as a negligent behaviour.