On Improving The System Of China's Representative Litigation

China enacted "Civil Procedure Law" in 1991, which had made provisions on "representative litigation systems" involving a large number of people. However, the law is rarely applied in practice, and it is even suspected that legislative resources have been wasted. There are many reasons, imperfect law provisions, lack of litigation awareness and capacity, the governments'interference in the case of groups in relation to their administrative action, the courts'taking evasive actions against group litigations, as well as judges, lawyers and other judicial personnel's lack of ability and quality, etc., which are affecting the application of representative litigation system. Law provisions are imperfect, which is the fundamental reason, has caused difficulty in the practice of representative litigation system. If representative litigation system cannot be fully applied, large-scale group disputes such as "Sanlu milk powder case" cannot get good settlements, and legal rights and interests of consumers would not be effectively protected.This paper begins with the analysis of "Sanlu milk powder case," and raises some law-related questions, for example, questions on how to strengthen its self-regulation for an enterprise, questions on products responsibility, questions on quality supervision, etc,. Then the paper describes that a large number of victims brought lawsuits to the courts, but it was so difficult for them to claim damages that their legitimate rights and interests cannot be protected effectively, from which this paper selects its own angle—How to make representative litigation system more perfect. In this part, the paper describes the status of our representative litigation system, and analyses drawbacks of China's representative litigation system combined with "Sanlu milk powder case":provisions for bringing representative proceedings are too harsh; proceedings and substantive rights of selected representative provides are unscientific; representatives'lack of rights in proceeding; provisions about litigation costs are not clear; lack of incentives and "free rider" is serious; the court does not play a supervisory role. The last part of this paper analyzes the reasons of frequent violations for consumer groups'rights and interests in China. Taking the Group Litigations in the United States and the Groups Class Action Litigation in Germany for example, the paper makes discussion on the improvement of representative litigation system in China based on the current situation of China. That is, expanding the scope of litigation; improving the power of registration procedures; clearing commitment to legal costs; relaxing the conditions and legal rights of the selected authority; strengthening the supervisory role of the courts; establishing legal incentives and disciplinary mechanisms and endowing consumer associations and other organizations litigation functions.