Research On Product Liability

With the rapid development of technology and the quickening pace oflife, the traditional kind of natural products and the mode of productionfor handicrafts industry can no longer satisfy the living needs. A varietyof modern products emerge at the right moment, bringing enormous changesto people’s lives. Personal injury and damage to property due toshortcomings in the products goes along with the great convenience ofmodern products. After the socialized mass production, product processbecomes more and more complex and quality control becomes more and moredifficult, the situation is more severe. With the temptation of money,slip of ethics and absence of credibility, some companies stop at nothingto reach their private interests, bringing certain technology withsecurity threats on stream without further study, which leads toirreparable security events.In the terms of legislation, Product Quality Law of the People’sRepublic of China, Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protectionof Consumer Rights and Interests and Tort Law of the People’s Republicof China all have made a related product liability provisions. However,the application status of these laws is not satisfying in practicaloperation. Verdicts differ even for the same case. many legal issues remain unclear, such as the doctrine of liability fixation ofmanufacturers and sellers, the scope of the subject, and compensationscope (whether including product injuries only itself or not).This article employs legal methodology to classify, demonstrate thecurrent regulations, along with classification of cases, seeking to pointout existing problems in the justice practice. This paper is divided intofour chapters.The first chapter put forward the legal issues by introducing twocases, which run throng the whole article.The second chapter mainly carries on the legal limits of productliability and analyzes the types of products defects. On the scope ofsubject, besides producers of the defective product, the subject ofproduct liability should include producers of raw materials, elements andsemi-finished product. In addition, the subject of product liability alsoshould consider the supplier as well as the direct sellers of the defectiveproducts.The third chapter mainly studies on doctrine of liability fixationof manufacturers and sellers and discuss the constitutive requirementsof product liability. Manufacturer and sellers should take on no-faultliability for consumers, both belonging to untrue joint liability innature. Regarding to causation, this article agrees with constructivecausation.The fourth chapter focuses on the compensation scope of productliability. By devoted to make a comparison of law between United Statesand Germany, the article analyzes the related problems and reaches aconclusion.