On The Damages Caused By Force Majeure

Although in the modern society, the technology has been developed to a highlevel and people gradually extended their field of activity by technology, there arestill some limitations on the cognitions of the nature and themselves, existing manyobjective situations that threaten the production and life of the people. Otherwise,these situations can't be foreseen, avoided or overcome when the contract was made.Usually, we call these objective situations "force majeure". The present law on"force majeure" regulates that: If a contract can't be fulfilled due to force majeure,the obligations may be exempted in whole or in part depending on the impact of theforce majeure. Undoubtedly, this exemption may help the parties to anticipate therisks fully and evade them reasonably, which can protect the benefits of the parties,encouraging the trading thereby. But there is only a general regulation concerning onwhat the subsequential liability should the parties undertake after the dissolution ofthe contract, but there is no specific regulation concerning on how should the partiesshare in the loss after the exemption because of force majeure. In the author'sopinion, there are some differences between the dissolution due to force majeure anddue to the other situations prescribed in Article 97, which lead to the fact that thereare some contradictions between the Article 97 and Article 117. So we can't applythe general regulation of Article 97 to the problem of subsequential liability that theparties will undertake due to the dissolution by force majeure. Once force majeurehappens, If we can only apply the article 117 to exempt in whole or in partdepending on the impact of the force majeure, but there is no specific regulation forsharing in the loss after the exemption due to force majeure, which will cause somedefections in this regulation, bring many troubles for the practice, and lead to thesubstantial unfair as well. How to consummate our present law about sharing the lossdue to force majeure has a very important significance in reality. The problem abouthow to regulate the exemption due to force majeure and how to share in the loss afterexemption will be discussed with some actual case in this dissertation.