Summary

The central objective of penal power is the protection of legal rights. The limit of this objective is the principle of individual autonomy, according to which the bearer of a legal right has the right to decide for themselves how to exercise their legal right. Therefore, a person has the right, for example, to destroy their property, and suicide is not a punishable act. You must also defend your legal rights in situations where the threat to your legal rights is related to the actions of another person. In addition to the question of attributing consequences to the accused, the victim’s behaviour is also significant from the perspective of civil action. Namely, when deciding on a civil action, the possible negligence of the victim and its severity in causing damage to health must be taken into account. This article maps the criteria for deliberate self-endangerment as objective attribution criteria based on case law and assesses whether, on this basis, deliberate self-endangerment can be consistently and systematically defined, including whether and how it can be distinguished from the victim’s consent as a circumstance precluding unlawfulness. In addition, the authors assess whether deliberate self-endangerment is controlled in a similar manner in criminal and civil law, i.e., whether the affirmation of deliberate self-endangerment under criminal law also precludes the satisfaction of a civil claim.