A Study On Legal Problems Of Compulsory Wreck Removal

With regard to compulsory wreck removal, the international conventions and foreign laws don't have complete legal provisions as well as domestic law. However, as human marine activity being frequent increasingly, together with the swift and violent development of international trade, the enormous progress of science and technology, the vessel's maximization an mechanization day by day and goods transforming from simplification to multiplicity, legal questions brought by the wreck removal are complicated thereof. Obviously, the present legal provisions are so general that they can't meet the demand of the judicial practice. The lagging legislation requires us to scrutinize the compulsory wreck removal again.This thesis is based on numerous materials collected from domestic maritime authorities. Through thorough and meticulous researches on the information, the author sums up the main problems of compulsory wreck removal as follows: Who are responsible for the wreck removal; in which order they take the responsibility, and whether they can enjoy the Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims or not; the relationship among the parties on wreck removal; the legal nature of the expenditures of wreck removal; the priority of the expenditures of wreck removal. Among them the key problems are how to solve the compensation of the expenditures of compulsory wreck removal and how to set up an effective indemnification mechanism for it. As to the above-mentioned questions, the current law is lack of concrete and clear provisions or the regulations aren't rational, there are lots of disputes in practice.In light of solving the problems existing in the present legal system on compulsory wreck removal, as guided by the basic theories of jurisprudence, civil law as well as administrative law, by full application of the achievements in the studies of this field and by reference to the achievements in international studies, by use of scientific ways in legal studies such as comparative analysis, value analysis, economic analysis and historical analysis, after defining the relevant definitions, the thesis finally solves the problems one by one. First of all, after studying the legal attribute of compulsory wreck removal, the thesis sets forth its forming conditions and the legal relations between eachparty under different situations. Secondly, the author discusses the expenditures caused by the compulsory wreck removal from the view of entity and procedure, including the character, the responsible subjects, the limitation of the liability and the limitation period for claims of the expenditure. In the end, the thesis enumerated several schemes that can be chosen to indemnify the expenditures of the compulsory wreck removal. By comparing synthetically, the author puts forward suggestions of the framework of the fund system for the compulsory wreck removal cost. The author hopes to offer a set of reasonable and enforceable legal rules regulating relations in the compulsory wreck removal for our country.