Social and Legal Studios

In present article, an attempt to answer the question whether a service agreement between individuals (or any other civil contract) is the legal ground for the emergence of labor relations between individuals and whether one of the parties can be considered an employee, concerning this agreement, in the sense of paragraph 3 of Article 477 of the CPC of Ukraine as amended by the Law of Ukraine No. 767-VII of 02/23/2014. The position of the panel of judges of the First Judicial Chamber of the Cassation Criminal Court on the above issues and our counterarguments concerning it. In particular, based on current legislation and existing scientific publications, it was established that an employee is an individual who works under an employment contract, including an individual. The legal basis for the emergence of labor relations between individuals is not civil and legal, but labor contracts. In civil and legal relations there is no such party as a hired employee (participants in a civil contract with an individual are the customer and performer), and in the labor relations – there is such a party. There are cases when a court can qualify a civil contract as labor; and in that case an employer and employee should be considered the parties of such services agreement. The opinion of the Supreme Court is different, in particular, the essence is that, in the sense of Article 477, paragraph 3, paragraph 1 of the CPC of Ukraine, as amended by the Law of Ukraine No. 767-VII of February 23, 2014, the concept of “hired employee” is much broader than in the labor law and it covers not only those cases when the guilty person on the basis of the signed employment contract, performed certain work in the interests of the victim, but also all other cases of employment relations, when a person, on the basis of any civil and legal agreement, performed work in favor of the victim and at the time of committing a crime was actually a hired employee