On Doctrines Of Liability Fixation For Defective Products

Regarding the doctrines of liability fixation for defective products, there are no specific legal rules in our country, causing lots of arguments both in theory and in practice,with great significance in many areas, the reasonable and practical doctrines on product liability fixation for defective products will impact the liability types, constitutive elements, evidential burden, sum of damage compensation, etc., also playing guidance role in case judgment, protecting the rights of consumers or users, keeping in good order for merchandise circulation, encouraging the producers to reduce the defects of products and prevent potential damages, hence motivating the growth of social market economy. In many countries, they experienced several development stages on the liability fixation, such as, No Liability, Liability with Fault & Strict Liability, etc. In our country, we mainly adopted Liability with Fault, Presumption of Fault & Strict Liability in current product liability legal system, Meanwhile, for different responsibility parties ( producers, sellers ) apply different liability distributing principles. Through the comparison of product liability related laws and regulations in foreign countries (especially in EEC and USA) with those in our country, analyzing their respective advantages and disadvantages, also considering the reality of our present legal system, some suggestions will be given to perfect the doctrine of strict liability & its defenses for both producers and sellers. With significant advantages, the doctrine of strict liability has been adopted by many developed countries. Through analyzing the advantages of strict liability, trying to provide the theoretical support to this principle in our product liability law, the advantages including, saving social cost, improving productivity and achieving social justice, etc. However, this principle is not a sole and perfect one, it also has many disadvantages. So we need to try our best to take the advantages and figure out the disadvantages, taking effective measures to improve our law system, applying reasonable fixation principle to the right parties, only in this way, the fundamental intention of the law can be realized.Though we have adopted the doctrine of strict liability, it does mean that the producers and sellers always need to compensate for their product liability, unless the product is proved to have defects which may cause damage to user's property or health. If no defect, no liability. It is not necessary for plaintiff to prove the faults of defendant. However, in order to balance the rights and interests for producers, sellers and consumers, there are still some opportunities for the defendant to exempt from liability based on the legal defense clauses, so the strict liability is relatively strict, it differs from absolute liability.After analyzing the doctrines of product liability in different countries, I would try to give some suggestions for improving our current strict liability principle, such as, Constructing limitation of product liability, Punitive compensation system, Defenses of product liability & Defective product recall system, etc.