Abstract. The working relationships based on the individual labour contract have an unprecedented aspect in civil law, namely, inequity of parts during the performance of the contract. This inequity is transposed in theoretical and applicative plan by the existence of the subordination report between the employer and employee. The lack of balance of the forces between the two parts of the contract constituted the necessary element for the birth of the new law branch which, by its settlements, to compensate this drawback. Though, in matter of liability, this “law of inequity” does not distinguish as a creator of new and independent institutions from “the general law”, apparently confining only at the removing or compensating the premises of the parts inequity. Thus, the Romanian labour law create a specific institution named patrimonial liability which involve applicable rules in the legal relationship arise from the individual labour contract that represent an exception from the common rules of the civil liability but does not completely delimit from it and using it as a decipherer resource of its elements and as supplement resource.

The patrimonial liability does not exclude in all the situations the co-existence of other forms of civil, contravention or criminal liability if the necessary elements for their incidence occur.

Keywords: liability; employer; employee; labour law; civil law; patrimonial liability; civil liability; contract.