On The Maritime Personal Injury, Civil Liability

Liability for loss of life and personal injury at sea is an important part of both tort law and maritime law. However, emphasis has seldom been give on this area in civil law study while maritime law itself focuses on carriage of goods by sea and insufficiently deals with such liability. The author will use the basic theory of civil law and take account of the particularities of maritime law to conduct an analysis of the regime of compensation for loss of life and personal injury at sea. This thesis will discuss conceptions and characteristics of this liability, doctrine of liability determination, co-existence of liabilities and the scope of the liability together with the personal view of the author on improvement of the scheme of liability for loss of life and personal injury in Chinese law.This dissertation consists of 5 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the conception of the personal injury at sea, and analyses the constitutive factors of venue, time and substantive factors. Further, it reviews the characteristics of civil liability for loss of life and personal injury at sea as well as the unique characteristics of such liability as distinguished from general civil liability; and in this chapter, civil liability is categorized for personal injury at sea. Chapter 2 focuses on the legal relationship between the parties, the nature of liability, and the doctrine of the liability fixation. Chapter 3 deals with the issue of coexistent liability in the context of loss of life and personal injury at sea. China Maritime Law is different from the related international conventions which do not adopt the concept of coexistent liability, and with certain restrictions accepts this conception which prevails in domestic civil law. Chapter 4 focuses on the measures of indemnities in loss of life and personal injury at sea claims, compensation principle, calculation standard and limitation of liability. Chapter 5 is a conclusion in which the author put forward his own point of views with respect to improvement of application of Chinese law in compensation for loss of life or personal injury at sea; current pending problems, restriction of the traditional maritime law; incorporation of international practice for purpose of internationalization of measure of indemnity in loss of life or personal injury claims.