Legal Study On Exemption Excuses Of Tort Liability

The main task of tort law is to give a balance to activity freedom and benefit protection .Therefore ,the theory of tort law ,apart from discussing questions such as the constitution of tortuous conducts and compensation liability from the point of victims, also presents the general principles concerning the exemption and relief of liability for the benefit of tortfeasors.Only in this way can the balance between the protection of freedom and benefit be achieved.The exemption excuses of tort liability, which is an important and indispensable component in fixing tort liability, and a significant respect as to ultimately determining whether a tortfeasor has tort liability or not, the same as the constituent terms of tort liability, has a great theoretical and practical meaning to the ultimate determination of tort liability.Rules about exemption excuses of tort liability in many countries are adapted to the modes of their tort laws have adopted. Since tort law of the common law system chooses the pattern of listing tortuous conducts in view of its legal sources and tradition of case law, for the practical need of benefit balance, it has set respectively effective and definite exemption excuses to every concrete tortuous conduct. However, the rules on exemption excuses in the continent law system, different from those of the common law system, are relatively simpler and highly general, set in concentrating form instead of being corresponding to concrete tortuous conducts.Succeeding the tradition of the continent law system, rules on the exemption excuses of our country are rather simple. Meanwhile, rules on this issue in some single laws have resulted in shapely unreasonable and unfair phenomena, thus harmed the benefit of victims. In our opinion, rules of the exemption excuses in tort law should be tightly connected with the categerization of tortuous conducts. Learning from the rules of the common law system on this question, that is, setting respective exemption excuses to different types of tortuous conducts according to the practical need of benefit balance, may make for not only the development of civil law theory but also judicial practice in our country..