Legal Protection Of Personality Rights Of Consumers

With the rapid development of Chinese civil air transport, air travel safety is a matter of vital importance to passengers' life and property security. In particular, the 911 tragedy in the United States has sounded a worldwide alarm to the airline industry which is now confronted with a major challenge:to effectively guarantee aviation safety while minimize the hold-up effects on passengers caused by these safety measures. In the course of strengthening aerial safety, however, consumers' personality rights are frequently violated. Less prominent in traditional civil laws, personality right is nevertheless a basic right to ensure human dignity. In present society where individual existence and development are drawing increasing attention, the emphasis of personality rights and its position in civil laws is an effort to protect people's personality rights in various fields of our daily life. As a member of the society, everyone assumes the role of a consumer at a certain moment. When buying products or services, consumers' rights are more or less violated. However, attention has been traditionally given to the protection of consumers' life and property interests while personality rights have often been neglected.This paper attempts to propose countermeasures against the phenomenon of refusing to take passengers in air travel and related advice on the improved protection of consumers' personality rights through analyzing the case of Fan Houjun's lawsuit against Xiamen Airlines for violating his personality rights, the first airline blacklist case in China. The paper presents the details of the trial and the controversial points of the case--whether Xiamen Airline's refusal to take passenger Fan Houjun has violated his personality rights and whether the company is in a legal position to set down blacklist. Centering on these controversies, the paper provides definition and explanations of consumers' personality rights, points out the inadequate protection of this legal right in some industries and discusses the conflict between the protection of consumers' legal right and the public safety maintenance.