On The State Compensation Liability For Damage Caused By Defectus Of Public Facilities

Where there is damage, there is compensation. Even a tort caused by the defectus of public facilities ought to be relieved. The compensation for damage caused by the defectus of public facilities could have been covered by State Compensation Law. However, in judicial practice, due to the shortness of legal sources, it can only be categorized as civil compensation, which not only disobeys the spirit of jurisprudence but also be harmful for protecting the counterparts’legal interests.The prerequisites for dealing with defectus tort by public facilities include an exact definition of "public facilities", "defectus" and "damage", and a clear definitude of the tort imputation principle. Since defectus damage caused by public facilities is not absorbed into the State Compensation Law of China, the definition of those three concepts has not attracted adequate attention and delimitation, which will be emphasized in this paper. Before the new State Compensation Law became effective, the fault liability principle had been the general doctrine for the state indemnity. Afterwards, the strict liability was incorporated into the imputation system. This paper reckons that, the adjustment of the imputation principle has created institutional space for the defectus tort by public facilities to be relieved by the state compensation from the perspective of legislature.Therefore, based on the present situation of the compensation for the defectus damage caused by the public facilities of China, this study, by referring to several related works and legal sources of foreign countries and China and taking into account the fruits of the current development phase of state compensation, finds that, in the advent of the strengthening of China’s economy and the coming of the administrative supply, it is necessary and applicable to incorporate the defectus tort by public facilities into the state compensation system. In addition, this paper asserts its own points of view in the fields of compulsory execution, pursuing of recovery, adding lawful deed, and state redress responsibility in some special circumstances. "I see no ending," it is a systematic way to absorb the compensation for defectus tort by public facilities into the state compensation institution. It is imperative but needs patience as well. The modification of the original system lays important foundation and provides legal sources for the further research, but the study on the defectus tort by public facilities still needs a long way to go. Therefore, only by constantly improving and progressing can the state compensation system for defectus tort by public facilities be gradually built up.