Study On The Law Applicable To International Products Liability Legislation

With the development of international economy and trade, foreign or international product liability is becoming more and more frequent. It is inevitable that the problem of applicable law in the solution of relevant dispute. This paper combs and evaluates our country’s legislation on the basis of system research for applicable law to international products liability in the common view.This paper is divided into three parts which has an internal logic relationship:The first part discusses traditional legislation of applicable law to international products liability. As for the specific applicable law principle, this stage of legislation mainly adopts the tort law principle, the court law principle and the personal law principle. The adoption of these principles is different from country to country. Some apply the principle individually, but some combine principles to apply. It tends to be the place of the tort law as the center. In the application of the tort law, product liability as one of special tort liability is often more emphasis on using the regulation of the law of the place of damages; The court law and the personal law are often overlapped the tort law or select to apply. In addition, all countries tend to be more emphasis on the protection of the interests of the plaintiff or the victim when specifically using the principles of the applicable law above at this stage, and thus the legislation embodies the principles in favor of the plaintiff.The second part elaborates the development of the applicable law legislation of international products liability. With the development of product liability law and private international law itself, various limitations are more and more obvious in the use of traditional applicable law principles, and thus the legislation of applicable law of foreign product liability has experienced a series of changes. This change is mainly embodied in introducing the most significant relationship principle in order to enhance the flexibility of the applicable law. In order to enhance the rationality and predictability of the applicable law, it should be consider the influence of the parties, especially the influence of the will of the plaintiff in the applicable law, and thus it is necessary to make some limitations when applying the principle of party autonomy in the legal application of responsibility of the product; At the same time, it is also necessary to consider the benefit of the offender or the defendant in order to balance the benefit of both sides. This should use the principle of exclude the defendant unforeseen rules to reflect.The third part focuses on the legislation of applicable law of product liability in our country.Article 45 of the Application of Law in 2010 in China specially regulated the issue of application of product liability law is a selective conflict rule. It adopts the traditional principles of applicable law such as the principles of the law of the place of damages and the personal law, and also considers the principle of party autonomy to balance the benefit of both sides. From a general view, it has the advantages of protecting the benefit of the victim, pursuing the stability and predictability of application of law. But due to the scope plaintiff selected is too limited, the power plaintiff ensured the proper law is too much, the function range exclude the defendant unforeseen rules effected is narrowed improperly and don’t fully consider of the most significant relationship principle, that make the regulation of Article 45 exist deficiency in fact. Therefore, it should regard the most significant relationship principle as guiding principle, add the connecting points, limit the power that plaintiff choosing the law unilaterally properly and enlarge the range of applicable law of exclude the defendant unforeseen rules and so on. These measures further improve Article 45.