Research On The Damages Relief Of Mass Torts

Mass torts are not new type of torts, their liability principles and constitutive requirements are similar to the damages of traditional tort, but they have the obvious characteristics, such as, large numbers of scattered victims, complex causality, serious damages and serious social influence, hence mass torts are the special classifications of the torts. For their characteristics, the mass torts should have the special ways of damages relief. For compensation relief in mass tort, our country usually resolves to the aid of administrative remedy firstly, then to the civil relief or social relief, but the victims do not get the effective reliefs, because of the relative lagging of civil entity laws, the weak operation of procedural laws, the imperfect of the social relief systems and other reasons. In view of this, our country may establish a multiplex relief system to perfect the damage relief of mass torts by learning from the existent researches and systems aboard and combining with the situation of our country. Concrete measures are as follows:establish market share responsibility and punitive damages in the substantive law with limitation to a certain field applied; Improve representative action system and establish the public litigation instituted by social organizations according to the procedural law; Improve liability insurance system and establish special relief fund in the social relief. Substantive law relief provides basis for procedural law relief, the social relief remedies the hysteresis and persistence of the procedural law relief, and the social relief and procedure relief are executed in sequence of:relief fund----insurance----lawsuit.