Study On The Liability Of Multinational Corporation For Environmental Tort

With the continuous improvement of modern industrialization and the extensive use of a lot of science and high technology, environmental tort has increasingly become a key issue of concern. The destruction of human activities on nature and the imbalance of natural self-repair capacity, have broken the original symbiotic status, caused the destruction of the ecosystem on which human live on, and affected human being's survival and development. Environmental tort differs from the traditional one-there are qualitative differences between both, concerning the aspect of responsibility principle, burden of proof, accountability approach etc., and the specificity has a tremendous impact on the relevant existing legal concepts, principles and systems. The economic globalization and international cross-border investment, have been followed by transnational environmental tort. Multinational corporations use international investment, establish subsidiaries in the target country, and many other methods, setting up plants in developing countries, carrying out high-risk industrial production, and as a result, violating the environment of the host country and local residents. Lacking of legal status and business management features of multinational corporations, has raised difficulty to environmental tort accountability. The article will elicit the issues to be addressed via the introduction and comments of the case of Bhopal, and then will discuss the way of civil liability through the discourse from the principle of accountability of multinational environmental tort to the main body of tort liability. On the basis of these factors, the article will also describe the relevant legislation situation in China and put forward a sound proposal.This article is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the fundamental theory of multinational environment tort, including the legal status and mutual relationships of parent-subsidiary transnational corporations, advances its concept and features and then recommends the responsibility principle of multinational environmental tort. The second part emphatically deals with the subject of the responsibility, namely the subsidiary company, the parent company and the export country of transnational corporations. The third part elaborates the how to bear the civil liability for the multinational environment tort. Based in the tort liability law, this part discusses three way of bearing the civil liability, including violations exclusion, compensation for the losses and restitution. The fourth does some discussion from two aspects, namely the jurisdiction of the litigation and the choice of law during the legal action of multinational companies. In the lawsuit of the responsibility of the parent companies, these are the two main ways that they use to evade laws and regulations. In the fifth part, in terms of the laws and regulations and the existing problems of multinational environment tort, author simply points out the legal advice of perfecting environment tort liability of the multinational company on the basis of Chinese laws and regulations. The statement is from four aspects. The first is to further improve the legal system of negative "personality." The second is to stipulate the compulsory insurance system of environment tort liability. The third is to establish punitive compensation system. And the fourth is to partialy modify the Demonstration Law.