Research On Consumer Public Interest Litigation Mechanism Based On Food Safety

The “Civil Procedure Law of the people’s Republic of China” which revised in 2012 made a special provision for public interest litigation. In China, the majority of civil public interest litigation is about the right of consumers and the protection of environment. As a way of protecting the rights and interests of consumers, the common point of the consumer public interest litigation is that there may be lots of people involved in one case, and they are dispersed. For the Consumptions of food and drug, the amount of subject is always not very large, and without written contract between merchant and acquirer, there is always only the rapid trading for oral consumption mode. But once there is any problem emerging, will affect a wide range. So base on problems of the food safety in China, the papers made a deeply study to the Lawsuit mechanism of consumer public interest litigation which be prescribed in the “Civil Procedure Law of the PRC”.Firstly, this paper discussed the concept, development, and function of public interest litigation. Then through comparison between characteristics of Administrative supervision and legal action, non litigation mode and litigation mode, one-on-one litigation and public interest litigation, this paper made a brief analysis of the necessity, importance and feasibility of the consumer public interest litigation. And we investigate and confirm status and value consumer public interest litigation in the field of food safety.The main content of this paper is according to the obstacle in the implementation process of consumer public interest litigation, discussed something needed to be further research and perfect during the legislation and the judicial practice. Firstly is about the ownership of the right of action. Because of the words in the fifty-fifth of the “Civil Procedure Law of the PRC” is too general, in this paper, we reference the theory of Interest of action expansion, explored three aspects of the individual consumers, procuratorial authority and consumers’ association, and suggested that these three groups should be given the right of initiate public interest litigation and should be detailed specification by law. Secondly, we discussed the object and proof of litigation. We made a thorough theoretical study on the problem of concurrence of the claim which is very common in consumer public interest litigation, and suggested that burden of proof between the plaintiff and defendant should be allocated more reasonable in the judicial practice. Thirdly, on the issue of punishment compensation, we compared “Law of the PRC on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers” and “Food Safety Law of the PRC”, and suggested that enforcement and penalties should be ruled more accurate and reasonable. Fourth, on the issue of the size of the objective scope of res judicata, through the analysis of group lawsuit system of America and German, we suggested that in order to protect the interests of consumers and saving judicial resources, due to expand the res judicata limited.The main innovation of this paper is, firstly, we classified the consumer public interest litigation according to the different of the object of litigation. Secondly, this paper strived to explore several controversial issues of the ownership of the right of action, the object and proof of litigation, and the scope of res judicata. Finally we arrival at a conclusion based on a detailed interpretation.