Analysis On The Constitutive Elements Of Tort Liability For Environmental Noise Pollution

While the acceleration of the industrialization process promotes rapid economic development,many environmental problems are accompanied,and noise pollution is a part which cannot be ignored.Noise pollution is a kind of sensory infringement,whose damage can not be seen or felt,but it can cause serious harm to people's life,study and work,and now it develops an important factor restricting the improvement of the quality of life and the construction of Beautiful China.This article studies the relevant cases retrieved by using the “Itslaw Cases” database and gets the analysis results which show that noise pollution problems mainly exist in disputes over liability for torts,especially for disputes over liability for noise pollution.In judicial practice,The court generally adopted the provisions of Article 66 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Tort Liability(hereinafter referred to as the Law of Tort Liability)and Article 2 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Environmental Noise Pollution Prevention and Control(hereinafter referred to as the Law on Noise Pollution Prevention and Control).On the basis of the trial,the focus of the dispute between the plaintiff and the defendant in such cases is mainly whether it constitutes environmental noise pollution infringement and whether they should undertake the liability for noise pollution infringement.The definition of “noise pollution” in the “Noise Pollution Prevention Law” adopts a combination of subjective and objective methods,that is,the emitted noise constitutes noise pollution which must meet the two requirements of “exceeding standards”& “disturbing people”.However,noise that does not exceed the relevant national regulations also severely interferes with people's lives.Legal relief cannot be sought because it does not meet the legal definition of “noise pollution”.Compared with other environmental infringements,noise pollution infringements have their particularities: the uncertainty of pollution behavior,the abstraction of the damage consequences,and the complexity of the causal relationship,and these pose a great challenge to the judgement of environmental noise infringements.According to the Tort Liability Law,environmental pollution infringement does not require the acts to be illegal,but the Noise Pollution Prevention and Control Law requires that noise emission behaviors should exceed nationally prescribed standards,which means they must be illegal.The inconsistencies of those related laws bring confusion in application for judges in judicial decisions.In judicial practice,some judges hear noise pollution infringement cases based on neighboring relations.However,the provisions of the General Principles of the Civil Law of the People's Republic of China on Contracts(hereinafter referred to as the General Principles of Civil Law)and the People's Republic of China's Property Law(hereinafter referred to as the “Property Law”)on neighboring relations and tolerance obligations are mostly principled,which leads to the low operability of this clause and it is difficult to meet the needs of the trial of noise pollution infringement liability disputes.The constituent elements of environmental noise pollution infringement include three aspects: pollution behavior,damage facts,and causality.Because constituting noise pollution must satisfy both subjective and objective conditions(“exceeding standard” & “disturbing people”),some courts require the victim to prove noise emissions acts conform to subjective conditions,which leads to many noises that disturb people in life cannot be regulated by law.Environmental noise pollution is a kind of sensory pollution,which is affected by the difference of individual tolerance limits,and the degree of damage also varies.The party's proof of the fact of the damage has become a major obstacle to resolve disputes through legal channels.Therefore,the court should exercise its discretion reasonably when trying such cases.Based on the particularity of environmental noise pollution infringement,the determination of causality is the most difficult part to judge whether it constitutes environmental noise pollution infringement.Therefore,the part of the burden of proof for noise pollution infringement disputes is inverted,and the burden of proof of causality is assumed by the polluter.For the determination of causality,the principle of causality presumption is actually adopted.Based on the judgment of the court on whether a certain noise emission act constitutes a noise pollution infringement,this article takes the relevant theories of the Environmental Noise Pollution Prevention Law as the starting point to study the constituent elements of environmental noise pollution infringement liability to serve judicial practice better.