Study On Supplementary Liabilities

There are two senses of supplementary liabilities. A person who bears a strictly supplementary liability (or we call it supplementary liability in narrow sense) should compensate the victim the rest amount of damages which the victim is not able to collect from the primary liability bearer, and after compensation, he is entitled to recover from the primary liability bearer all the money he's paid to the victim. The person who bears a weakly supplementary liability (or supplementary liability in broad sense) should compensate the victim the rest amount of damages which the victim cannot collect from the primary liability bearer, but he has no entitlement to recover from the primary liability bearer whatever he's paid to the victim.Studies on supplementary liabilities are mainly focused in two aspects: the reason for the person to bear liability, and the reason for the person to bear supplementary liability. The former concerns the reason for liability, i.e., why he should bear liability; and the latter deals with the reason for supplementary liability, namely, after making it clear that the person is held liable, why he is held supplementally liable.Starting from the relevant legal provisions and scholarly doctrines of China, the author studies the legal supports as well as the circumstances of imposing supplementary liabilities. Based on this first step, the author broadens the horizon into provisions and solutions of foreign legal systems (mainly in the U.S. and in continental Europe) with respect to the above situations; meanwhile, she also checks the supplementary liability system per se in these different jurisdictions, in order to get an overview of the main legal zones on this specific system. The findings are that neither in the U.S. nor in continental Europe exists a supplementary liability system similar to the Chinese version, both legislations and academic theories identify various multi-liability cases as equivalents, despite the differences however huge they are, such rough treatment is evidently exposed to unjust outcomes; as to the Chinese part of the picture, although relevant provisions have been available, these instruments scatter in discrete systems, no generalized principle has been built so far, besides, theoretical studies in this area are still relatively superficial.As a consequence, the author goes deeper into the rationale of supplementary liabilities, including both subtopics mentioned above. While analyzing the first topic, the author covers every situation in which a supplementary liability is present, and then reaches the general conclusion through the way of deduction. Concerning the second topic, two perspectives are exploited. First, the author examines the characteristics of various cases involving supplementary liabilities, and thus finds out the elementary qualities of liability imposition. Second, the author lists all possible ways for distributing multiple liabilities, which consist of joint (solidary) liabilities (which include joint liabilities in strict sense as well as joint liabilities in broad sense, the latter is also called quasi-joint liabilities, or fake joint liabilities), several (divisible) liabilities, liability in common, several-joint liabilities, and supplementary liabilities. By comparing the characteristics of each form of multiple liabilities, with successive correspondence to the conclusion acquired in the first section, in conjunction with the principle that liability must be consistent to the degree of blameworthiness, as well as taking into consideration of other interested factors, the author finally arrives at the general theory of supplementary liabilities. That is, the reason for supplementary liabilities is that the person who has an affirmative duty should be liable for the harm suffered by the victim incurred by an aggressive wrongdoer, if the occurrence of the foregoing harm is due to his own fault; the reason for strictly supplementary liabilities is that the person who bears an affirmative duty should be held liable for the harm suffered by the victim incurred by an aggressive wrongdoer, if his fault has facilitated the aggressive wrongdoer in injuring the victim.