Discussion About Pure Economic Loss

There has been a new type of damage in tort since 1960s which is named pure economic loss. Pure economic loss is the loss which dose not result from the physical damage to person and property. It is unfamiliar concept to our country and the west countries only started to focus on this problem in 1960s. Along with the constant development of economy in modern society, the economic interrelationship between people has become much stronger than before. So it is highly possible for people and enterprises to suffer pure economic loss in the everyday life. In some circumstances, the results are too terrible to influence the stability of economic system ,such as the cable case,the misrepresentation case ,the enclosure of high way case ,etc . Accordingly, we can not avoid these economic loss and the laws should show some attitude to them . On the other hand , pure economic loss happens so easily , may influence so many people and is so uncertain . If the court open the "Flood Gate" which means allow the victim to claim pure economic loss , it may cause the overflow of litigations , waste the cost of society and prevent the normal operation of economic life . Consequently , the attitudes of British , American , German and France are very cautious about this problem and these countries try their best to seek a good solution to this problem without influencing the economic activities.How to compensate pure economic loss is another important problem which has generated many arguments. Pure economic loss has very abundance of categories, so we can not use one standard to solve all the types. So it needs looking for different ways for different categories after considering the policy factors behind each category. According to the traditional theory of civil law, pure economic loss should be regulated in the contract law. In fact it is not very suit for contract law to regulate this kind of loss and it is prone to put pure economic loss under the tort law. As to this question, different country has different way , but there has been many question unsettled and no united theory , which makes the research of pure economic loss much more challenging . This thesis mainly discusses two questions: whether pure economic loss should be compensated and how to compensate which is discussed more than the former. This thesis includes three parts: preface, text and the ending. The text mainly consists:Part I: this part mainly discusses the concept of pure economic loss which includes the history of pure economic loss , the concept and categories , the comparison with the types of damage in civil law and the relationship between the contract and tort . Part 2: this part mainly discusses the theoretic development and cases of pure economic loss in British, American, German and France, and then compare and analyze these attitudes .Part 3: this part mainly discusses whether pure economic loss should be established in Chinese civil law.