Civil-legal means of protection of rights and interests of consumers

Civil-legal means of protection of rights and interests of consumers are being investigated, their role and significance in the mechanism of protection of civil rights are being detected, correlation between categories civil-legal means, form and means of protection of civil rights is being defined. An attention is paid to the necessity of distinction the categories civil-legal means of subjective civil rights and legal means of protection of subjective civil rights. A special attention is paid to consideration of civil-legal means used in the sphere of protection of rights and protected by law of consumers' interests including a special position of a citizen-consumer as a weak side in legal relation of economic conditions, level of education and purchasing power. Fixing legal guarantees of exercising consumers' rights and lawful interests is due to necessity to achieve a legal equality in legal relations with participation of citizens-consumers and is predetermined by a target direction of legislation to protection of consumers' rights, combining both private legal means and public legal means of protection. Such an integrated approach to protection of consumers' rights as a weak side of civil legal relations provides a necessary level of efficiency of exercising its subjective civil rights. Consideration of provisions of current Russian legislation to protect consumers' rights and enforcement practice is presented including latest clarifications contained in resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation from 28 June 2012 №17 On consideration of civil cases on disputes on the protection of consumers' right by courts. The legislation on protection of consumers' rights is a dynamically developing legal field which is due to enlargement of the sphere of its application. An attention on changes and clarification of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation's position on a number of principal issues comparing to clarification contained in the resolution of the plenum from 29 September 1994 №7 On practice of consideration the cases on protection of consumers' rights by courts (currently recognized void) is paid.