A Study On Mental Distress Of The Third Party

In recent years, the mental distress of the third party has been an issue in animated discussion in comparative law. And there are many cases of this type in judicatory practice in China, in which some courts has made judges to support the claim of compensation for mental distress of the third party. There is, however, no responding law and regulation on this problem in China, and there are also no domestic scholars making a systematic research on it.Owning to lack of uniform legal standard of the mental distress of the third party and its remedies, this problem becomes one of the ambiguous fields of torts and there are too many disputes in judicatory practice, which impairs the solemnity of the law and gives rise to distrust of the law in common. Therefore, it is of great theoretic and practical value to do research on the mental distress of the third party and its remedies.The thesis consists of three parts of preface, text and conclusion. And the text is divided into four chapters.In Chapter One, the writer firstly gives a definition to mental distress of the third party, and describes its legal characteristics in details. Then, the writer will analyze the legal nature of mental distress of the third party. At last, the legal foundation of compensability of the mental distress of the third party will be discussed deeply in this chapter.In Chapter Two, the writer introduces and studies mental distress of the third party in comparative method. In this chapter, the writer selects American law, English law and German law as objects of study. The writer introduces the development of relative theories in American law, rules on requirements of liability in English law and rules established in judicatory practice on this problem in German law.In Chapter Three, the writer analyses the current legal system in relation of this problem in China, that is, compensation for mental distress of near relative and equitable liability doctrine, and then compare them with theory of mental distress of the third party. Based on the above analysis and comparison, the writer makes a conclusion that it is necessary to introduce and use theory of mental distress of the third party for reference in China.In Chapter Four, the writer advances some suggestion as to how to construct the requirements and standards of compensation for mental distress of the third party from four points, that is, damage, infringing act, fault and causality.