Study Of Public Interest Litigation

According to the traditional theory of civil procedure law , the parties to a civil lawsuit consists of a plaintiff and a defendant whose interests conflict in most cases. However, complicated social relationship determines that the parties to a civil lawsuit are not a single plaintiff against a single defendant. A single civil lawsuit may involve many litigants. In the past decades, collective actions concerning social effects of pollution, disaster, consumer rights protection and such have been increasing all over the world. With the development and innovation of science and technique, the victims of some kind of tort may amount to dozens of people, hundreds of people and may even to thousands of people, whether the tort may be direct injury to the victims' life ,health or direct damage to the victims' property, or indirect threat to the victims' residential area. This kind of tort actions may bring about serious social problems and also pose a challenge to the traditional theory of civil procedure law which entails such principles as Eligible Plaintiff and Direct Interests. This kind of litigation is characteristic of singleness of tort action, repetition of tort action and homology of claim and dispute ground. This new kind of litigation is referred to as Public Good Litigation, the consequence of which shall have impact on many people who share the same interests instead of on one plaintiff. The public good litigation mechanism contains some constituent elements with which the traditional pattern of civil procedure law is incapable of dealing. For instance:363 stockholders V.S Yi An Tech Corp is a good case in point. Many small and medium-sized investors who claimed their damage as a result of an actual civil fraud lodged the complaint in late 2001 and the complaint was once publicized and bubbling with noise. The court dismissed the case but gave no concrete reasons. It is submitted that two factors led the court to dismiss the case: the existing tools which seemed applicable were ill at ease in operation for the case and the judicial interpretation in accord with security law hadn't come into being then. Not come singly but in pairs,two years before the complaint, some investors initiated a suit against PT Hong Guang Corp and claimed damage for its misappropriation of funds. To their disappointment, the court didn't accept the case. In addition, in the past a few years, some people's procuratorates have brought actions to people's court in the name of plaintiff. This kind of actions usually involve state interests or commonweal, such as the loss of state owned assets. Some of the cases were accepted by the court but some of cases were not accepted by the court for the people's procuratorate was not considered as an eligible plaintiff. In my opinion, the problems mentioned above have arisen out of the lack and inadequateness of the institution of Public Good Litigation. In China, as far asenvironmental protection and the protection of consumers' rights are concerned, we have made tremendous progress in the past a few years, but the theory and practice of Public Good Litigation at present still lag behind the need of society. civil and administrative remedies are inadequate to the violation or prejudice of public interests. Eligible Plaintiff Principle and some of the procedural stipulations of the traditional civil procedure law can't meet the demand of times. The system of civil trial procedure shouldn't be a ornament of a country ruled by law. The institution of trial procedure perishes when people feel desperate about it or mistrust it.Out of concern with Chinese judiciary system and out of personal interest in Public Good Litigation, I choose Public Good Litigation as research subject of my dissertation paper. The paper is based on a careful study and analysis of all the material available and the main body consists of five chapters:Chapter one. The historical study of Public Good Litigation. Public Good Litigation originated in the old Rome law system, and the essence of Public Go...