Study On The Civil Liability System Of Oil Pollution Damage Caused By Ship Collision

The collision of ships may be one of the reasons of oil pollution, and thesituation would be more complex compared with the one where the pollution occurredout of the own reason of the ship itself. In the lastesd Rules of the Supreme People’ sCourt on the Handling of Cases Concerning Ship Oil Pollution Damage, it regulatesthat if the leakage were from more than two ships in one collision accident, all of theleaking ships would assume liability by shares according to the distinguishable size ofleakage and damage to the environment. Meanwhile, the ships would assume jointliability if the size of leakage and damage to the environment cannot be reasonablydistinguished.However, the specified compensation liability of the non-leaking ship in the oilpollution accident caused by ships’ collision cannot be found in the internationaltreadies and neither in our domestic law. This paper would focus on this issue.This paper is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction definingthe scope of the issues discussed in the paper. Chapter two is a summary of the civilliability regime of legal relationsips of ships’ collision and oil pollution. Although theleakage is caused by ships’ collision, they are still two separated legal relationshipsgiven to the elements of applicable laws, responsibility principles and some others.Chapter three analyzes the civil liabilities of the leaking ship and the non-leaking shiprespectively, and suggests that the non-leaking ship should also be subject of liabilityto the victims in the legal relationship of ship oil pollution. Meanwhile, moreapproaches of the remedies should be provided not only in the substantive law butalso in the procedural law. Chapter four is about the legal recommendations, primarilytaking the interests of the victims into account. At the same time, there is still noeffective Oil Pollution Act in present China law system, and the oil pollution causedby ships’ collision with non-leaking ship is just a special situation should beregulated in the Oil Pollution Act. Hence, perfecting our domestic leagal system isindeed the fundamental solution to the issue regarding the liability of the ship withoutoil leakage.