Research On Commercial Fraud

It is now regarded as legitimate to chase after interest. But the condition is that you mustn't break the law or offend other people's benefits. In order to achieve the benefits which shouldn't belong to them, some businessmen spare no efforts to fraud and gain their interests in price of others'. Deceit undermines the honest social atmosphere and impedes development of the economy. Attention has been paid to its danger which is becoming more and more obvious. Professor Wang Liming and Yang Lixin defined commercial deceit as a specific tort.Deceit first appeared in Roman Law. In British and American law, deceit is a specific tort. The countries in the continent have also affirmed this through judicial interpretations and cases. This paper is expected to establish theories about commercial deceit through comparative observation of it.Regarding the definition of deceit, shortly speaking, it is to make people implement juristic act through deceit. I will compare commercial deceit with the deceit in the system of juristic act and that in the criminal law. After referring to some scholar's opinions, I give deceit such a definition: deceit is the violation of other people's interests through deceit or concealment, and the damages caused to others should be compensated. The "deceit" in China's tort law has unique characteristics. Firstly, its occurrence is limited to certain areas. Secondly, the subject of it is widened, businessmen is not the only one. Finally, the object of commercial fraud includes right of property and personality. Whether personal right should be included in the object is still controversial in theoretical boundary.The theory about the elements of commercial deceit is the basis to set up the system of commercial deceit, and it is the criterion to judge whether it is a commercial deceit or not, and it can play a guiding role in the judicial practice. In my opinion, there should be five necessary conditions: the substantive false statement, that is to say, it must have major influence on the plaintiff's selection; the awareness of false statement; the original purpose is to deceive the plaintiff in to trust, the defendant is only responsible for the deceit to the intended object; the plaintiff's reasonable trust and action accordingly; the fact of the plaintiff's damages.If the deceit or the concealment happens under such conditions, the subject should be responsible for the fraud. If this fraud happens to coincide with the contract law on the elements of fraud, this will lead to the coincidence of contractual liability and tort liability. France is a typical country that forbids coincidence of contractual liability and tort liability, while Britain and America permit it in order to protect the victims and provide more relief channels.Some relevant systems need to be established to set up judicial controlling systems against commercial deceit. As to the rules concerning damage compensation for commercial fraud, I think the parties should be allowed to choose application of the rules of actual harm or the availability of benefits rules. The damage compensation of fraud may refer to the principle of punitive compensation in British and American laws to the purpose to deter the fraudster. In addition, other related social credit system, market access system should also be included in the judicial controlling system.The damage to the society caused by commercial fraud has become obvious, while the legislation in this field is still far behind. Few researches have been done and the theoretical boundary is silent about that. All these things are in sharp contrasts with the reality. The author just carried out this preliminary study, expecting to be of some help to the construction of relevant theories.