Research On Causality In Environmental Pollution Liability

Article 1230 of the Civil Code provides for the determination of the causal relationship between environmental pollution and ecological damage,In addition to the new ecological damage responsibility,The identification of the causality of environmental pollution is the same as the Tort Liability Law and relevant judicial interpretations.Look back to the Tort Liability Law period,Inversion of the burden of proof has become the mainstream view of environmental pollution liability,However,many scholars have put forward that the principle of causal presumption should be applied,The two views are in constant dispute.The empirical study of judicial cases found that the standards of judicial determination in different courts are different,The application of the inversion of the burden of proof is entirely borne by the infringer of causality is rarely proved,The judicial interpretation further stipulates that the plaintiff shall bear the preliminary burden of proof of the correlation between the pollution act and the damage result,After the implementation of the Civil Code,The distribution of burden of proof is inconsistent in practice,The judgment standards of the plaintiff’s preliminary evidence and the defendant’s rebuttal degree are different,Over-reliance on appraisals ignores questions such as judge’s review and doctrinal disputes,Considering the complexity and particularity of environmental pollution behavior itself,in order to avoid the identification of its causal relationship into the bog of scientific debate,Causality presumption should be adopted to judge the causality from the consideration of factors that reduce the victim’s proof standard and intervention value.The relevance of the plaintiff is different from the causality of the defendant.The relevance is more of a subjective judgment,and the methods of proof are diversified,If the judge agrees that the pollution behavior is related to the damage result,the plaintiff is considered to have fulfilled the burden of proof.The defendant’s proof that there is no causal relationship often relies on scientific knowledge and expert opinion to meet a high standard of probability,Judges should avoid over-reliance on expert opinions and neglect their own value judgment and demonstration of specific cases when examining evidence,The inference of causality is made according to the logic of syllogism.Article1230 of the Civil Code omits the provision on the plaintiff’s burden of proof,which means in the environmental pollution liability does not only defendant bears the burden of proof.It can be understood as a kind of prompt clause,but in fact omits the preliminary requirement of proving the correlation between the plaintiff’s undertaking action and the result,It still follows the principle of who claims the proof in civil proceedings,For different environmental pollution cases,It is necessary to make a categorical distinction and refer to relevant theories applicable to the presumption of causality.The rights and interests damaged by the pollution act are different,It can be divided into pollution behavior causing private benefit damage and pollution behavior causing public benefit damage.According to the different types of reactions,the private benefit damage caused by pollution behavior can be divided into chemical pollution and physical pollution,In the judgment of causality,the two have different attitudes towards the national industry standards,In the public welfare damage caused by environmental pollution,the causality of property damage to the majority of people can be determined by indirect proof.In the case of harm to the health of an unspecified number of people,the causality of epidemics should be referred to in the absence of empirical rules,and indirect proof should be applied in the case of empirical rules or scientific conclusions.