Products Liability Legal Problem Research

With the advance of scientific technology and the rapid development ofindustrial production, the products played more and more important roles in people’slife. Products, on the one hand, has made the life more convenient and comfortable,on the other hand, has caused people lots of unexpected damages through which hasmade social economic and political crisis increasingly serious due to its variousdefects. This dissertation mainly studies the product liability law which has appearedfor the sake of protecting the interests of the consumers and of keeping the interestsof the consumers, the manufactures and the distributors in balance.Along with the modernization of China, lots of food safety cases have made theproduct liability problems in China particularly serious. The problems of the productquality problems gradually became an unprecedented crisis. We now have manyprovisions to solve product quality problems, but they are not working in judicialpractices. So we can find unscrupulous manufacturers still producing all kinds ofinferior products and the interests of the consumers still lack of effective protectionsdue to the defective product liability system in China. At the same time, the UnitedStates has developed better system on this area. They have implied many laws andregulations, such as the standards of the identification of product defects, theimputation principle of product liability and the punitive damages system. So it isnecessary for China to learn from the United States.In this dissertation, comparative analysis of the Sino-US cases is used to discussthe topic. At the beginning, it introduces some similar cases which get some differentjudgments in the two countries; and then analyze it with legal and economicalmethods to show the rational parts of the system in the United States.In addition to the introduction, this dissertation includes five chapters. The mainparts are the former four chapters. The first chapter mainly discusses the definition of product defects. It beginswith a comparative analysis of different cases, and then analyses the differences ofthese two countries in defining product defects. It includes a detailed introduction andanalysis on both sides. And then it will legally and economically identify the rationalparts of the standards of the United States in this area. Eventually, it will providesome advices to China that China should also establish the standards of identifyingproduct defects in which the defects of the products would be clearly divided intomanufacturing defects, designing defects and warning defects and accordinglyestablish different standards.The second chapter mainly studies the imputation principles of product liability.It would point out the differences between these two and then make a detailedintroduction on the development process of the imputation principles of productliability in the United States. This introduce also provides some advices for perfectingthe imputation principles of product liability in China. It will use legal andeconomical methods to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the variousimputation principles and provide some advices the imputation principles of productliability of China. Different imputation principles should be also established in Chinabased on different defects. Specifically speaking, manufacturing defects apply tostrict liability and designing defects and warning defects apply to fault liability.The third chapter mainly discusses the punitive compensations of productliability. It analysis the issues of the punitive compensation in product liability systemby two cases and then makes a detailed introduction on the punitive damages ofproduct liability which also uses legal and economical methods to demonstrate thenecessity and importance of punitive compensations. It intends to provide atheoretical foundation for establishing the punitive compensation system in China.The system should include three parts which are the punitive compensation apply tothe product liability cases must based on the defendants’ subjective fault, the amountof punitive compensation must be efficiency and fair and the plaintiff must bear theburden of proof in the punitive compensation cases.The fourth chapter mainly discusses the special liable parties of product liability.It would use a product liability case of the United States to raise the question and then introduce the provisions of the company laws and product liability laws of the UnitedStates on this issue. And eventually it suggests that China should make the relevantprovisions as soon as possible.