Foreign Product Liability Laws Applicable To The System Studied

With the fast development of the global economy and the highly advancement of science and technology and with the renovation of production style and the improvement of the public consumption ability, the more and more danger comes out in the public's routine lives. Therefore, some new characteristics are showed in the trans-territory cases on product liability, such as the indirect nature of tort behavior, the high-tech and complicated nature of tort behavior and so on. Under this circumstance, China has no regulation particularly aiming at the application of law on foreign product liability while many developed countries have made special law. Till now, the principle for the application of law on tort behavior is still adopted to settle cases of foreign product liability in China, which simplifies and distorts the choosing of the law applied in the more complicated cases, also ignoring and hiding other related elements more important and closer to the cases. So, on the basis of the regulation of the 86th article in the 9th chapter in the Civil Code (Draft), adopting several contact points, making the special regulation on the application of law on foreign product liability suitable for the time, to settle the social problem on how to safeguard the social security and equality effectively and to protect the body right and the property right of consumers, especially the life right and the health right of the public, is with far-reaching influence. There are five parts in the article.The first part is about the summary of the product liability. The definitions of product liability, product and defect, the nature of product liability and the principles to determine the responsibility of product liability are introduced. The second part is to explore some contents related to conflicts of law on foreign product liability. The causes resulting in conflicts of law on foreign product liability are analyzed and the main conflicting aspects are introduced. Also in this part two methods are showed to settle the conflicts.The third part is about the system of law applicable to foreign product liability in some developed countries, in which the principles of the law applicable to foreign product liability and the systems on the application of law on foreign product liability in some countries are mainly introduced.The forth part is about Convention on The Law Applicable to Product Liability, in which the Convention is introduced and reviewed and also some opinions on whether China should participate into this Convention are given.The fifth part is about Chinese system on the application of law on foreign product liability and how to perfect the system. The present condition and shortcomings of Chinese law on product liability and the Chinese law on the application of law on foreign product liability are introduced by the analyses of some cases. Then the article 86th in the 9th chapter in the Civil Code (Draft) is elucidated and analyzed. Finally some other suggestions are put forward together with the article 86th to perfect the law applicable to foreign product liability of China.The comparative method is used in the article. The theoretically creative points are as follows: first, introducing party autonomy appropriately and allowing parties to choose applicable laws by mutual consent is benefit to decrease the lawsuit cost though relative regulations are commonly regarded not to be excluded by parties in contracts in domestic law; second, adopting the rule of excluding the applicable laws which can not be predicted by the defendant will balance the protection to the plaintiff and the responsibility taken by the defendant on the basis of the regulation of the 86th article in the 9th chapter in the Civil Code (Draft); third, perfecting Chinese system on the application of law on foreign product liability need amend and coordinate therelated substantive laws.