German Group Litigation System Research

German class lawsuit primitive - anti-unfair competition Verbandsklage was established in 1896: Overcome Illegitimate Competition Law. It aimed to remedy the deficiency in autonomy process after abolishing the guild system, therefore to protect victims from illegal competition. As the development of society and economy, group lawsuit has expanded to other law domains, especially in consumer protection and environment protection. Germany has never stopped its study in individual rights protection, although it focused on group action system for very long time, administrative lawsuit is one of those being developed. After year 2000, the domain and functionalities of German model suit has been broadened into civil lawsuit.Besides abstract, this article has six chapters: In abstract, the author discusses the definitions of German class disputation, class lawsuit, as well as its development. The author thinks that the law system in our country is similar to that of Germany. Thus the study of German class lawsuit enables us to better referencing German class lawsuit. The abstract describes the structure of this article.The first chapter describes the generation of German class lawsuit, its social background, law environment, judicature environment, and how they affect each other. Due to a lot of factors, we are lack of direct source of articles on German group lawsuit, it's even worse when comes to German society, its legislation and judicature environment. With its own characteristics, German class lawsuit is deep rooted into its society. With abstraction from great deal of German articles and comment on them, the author aims to introduce the generation of German class lawsuit and its functioning environment, describe the difference of society and law environment between German and ours.The second chapter focuses on how German class lawsuit makes use of and develop classical lawsuit format in practice. In Japan and Taiwan, there are great deals of articles on German class lawsuit, especially in joint lawsuit and single lawyer multiple clients. Scholars in our country doubt on the functionalities of joint lawsuit, they have great interest in the two types of lawsuits mentioned above. The author summarized a lot of German lawsuit articles hoping that this can provide more information to the law society in our country. The author covers another type of lawsuit in Germany - common benefits community in chapter two. In chapter two, the author also discusses about the relationship between class litigation and classical litigation theoretically. German civil litigation system has a complete theoretically basis, the functioning mechanism of civil litigation is more than single litigation. In order to solve the problems in procedural settings and law practices, the German scholars discuss the possibilities of class lawsuit with the reference of German constitution and civil litigation law. The German law society believes that the difference between civil lawsuit and class lawsuit is in how to protect the litigants' hearing rights and basic procedural rights. The author summarizes Germany scholar's opinions, addresses his own opinions as well.Chapter three is about German group lawsuit. First, the author touches on the definition of group lawsuit, its functionalities and position in German class lawsuit. Second, the author talks about the evolvement group lawsuit, with references to great deal of legislation and justice activities. According to German law society, there are three areas in civil group lawsuit: anti-unfair competition, general trade terms, and consumer protection group lawsuit, the later is not an individual law, it's as important as Anti-unfair competition law and General trade terms law. German group lawsuit is not an ordinary lawsuit procedure, it's under different domain. The last three chapters discuss about the three most important group lawsuits: Anti-unfair competition law, General trade terms law and Nature protection law.Chapter four discusses about German classical lawsuit. Different from group lawsuit structurally, German classical lawsuit is under various law domains. Administrative case classical lawsuit is for administrative class disputation. It's for both administrative party and interested party to have opportunity to involve in administrative procedures. Administrative case classical lawsuit gives Germany a lot of experience in legislation, investor classical lawsuit is one of those referred to it. Investor classical lawsuit and consumer group classical lawsuit are two new types of class lawsuit in Germany. They are different from German group lawsuit in legislation and functionality. The victims in class disputation cases can make use of these two laws, request for compensation. The new lawsuit procedure marks the German class lawsuit as protecting litigants' subjective rights in addition to public and group interest.Chapter five covers the new finding in German class lawsuit study recently. Early 2005, Professor Miklitz and Stadler handed in a report - Das Verbandsklagerecht in der Informations- und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft to German ministry of consumer protection, food and agriculture. In this report, the two professors summarized German class lawsuit legislation and its theory. With plenty of comparison study, they projected the future of German class lawsuit. The author discusses about the Verbands-, Muster- und Gruppenklagen in the law legislation report, aims to introduce the trend of class lawsuit in German.In the ending portion, the author elaborates his opinions: there are plenty of class disputations in various types with various interest types in our country. Single class lawsuit is not enough for the complex class lawsuit in our country; different types of lawsuit should be adopted for different class disputation. In addition to existing representative lawsuit system, we should introduce group lawsuit to remedy the deficiency in other lawsuit models.