Legal position of a partner or shareholder in a commercial company and the status of consumer : an analysis involving concepts presented in German and Austrian law

Bibliogr. s. 150-155

Commercial law, as a branch of law regulating social relations between professionals, has axiology and genotype that is different from consumer law, which focuses on the protection of transactionally weaker subjects of civil law. Nevertheless, because of the far-reaching expansion of consumer protection to other relations, there is a junction between these two separate parts of civil law. The paper provides the results of the analysis concerning the possibility of applying consumer protection regulations to natural persons who are partners or shareholders in commercial companies. The author considered several situations of the possible application of that protection. The first two situations relate to participation in a company and acquiring a legal status of a partner or a shareholder. The third and the fourth connect to legal transactions with entities other than the parent company but with different details. The last one pertains to transactions with the parent company unrelated to the company's relationship. The paper also contains the examination of the legal status of partners and shareholders in situations when they lack consumer protection. The analysis involved a dogmatic and comparative approach with Austrian and German law, as well as cases of the European Court of Justice and theoretical studies on company law from the United Kingdom and the United States.