On The Product Defect Legal System

No field of tort law has changed more during the past hundred years than products liability. The law has progressed from a rule of no-liability, through liability based on fault, on to a rule of strict liability. In the system of strict product liability, product defect belongs to the fact element of the product liability theory, which is the center and basis of the product liability system. The institution of product defect reflects the aims of the legislature and the value selections. Only by the comprehension of product defect legal system can we recognize and understand the whole product liability system. The dissertation mainly makes a comparison of product defect legal systems, approaches the cause of the various regulations in order to make reasonable and possible suggestions to the process and completion of product defect legal system in our country.The whole discourse is divided into five parts. The first chapter"Basic Theory of Product Defect Legal System"explains the legal connotations of product, compares the different regulations of product defect in various countries and international agreements. At last, it analyses the connections and the differences between product defect and other concepts involved. The second chapter"The Types of Product Defect"explores the types of product defect through the connotations, the determinations and the principles of liability fulfillment, including unreasonable unsafe in construction, unreasonable unsafe in design and adequate warning or instruction. The third chapter"Conceptual Standards for Determining Defectiveness"introduces three standards such as consumer expectation test, cost-benefit analysis and two-division test from the appearance, the development, the origin and the practical significance of the above conceptual standards. The forth chapter"Counterplea of Product Defect"is the complement of conceptual standards for determining defectiveness, which is an important part of product defect legal system. The fifth chapter"Process and Completion of Product Defect Legal System in China"generalizes the regulation of product defect legal system in our country, analyses the insufficient parts of it. In the end, the dissertation makes reasonable and possible suggestions.