Research On Mere Bystanders’ Duty To Rescue In The Tort Law Pespective

Indifference to strangers in danger exists extensively in the modern society, but hysteresis nature of legislation makes traditional tort law difficult to deal with it. The acute contradiction is that the injured in distress is urgent for help but bystanders are negligent of taking reasonable measures even if there would be no dangerous for themselves. Faced with this predicament which demands prompt solution, foreign lawmakers have imposed the duty to rescue on bystanders to protect the personal safety of the injured. The duty to rescue imposed on mere bystanders in tort is a very complex system, which covers the following aspects:how to determine the subject and application conditions of the duty to rescue imposed on mere bystanders, how to determine whether bystanders has fulfilled the duty to rescue and how to decide the responsibility for violating the duty to rescue.The author explains theoretical bases of mere bystanders’ duty to rescue, such as jurisprudence, philosophy, law and economics, and systematically discusses the establishment of mere bystanders’duty to rescue, on the base of other countries’ legislations. The innovation of this paper is to point out mere bystanders’duty to rescue will be in favor of utilizing social resources, protecting individual interests of the society members and enhancing the whole well-being of the society based on China’s specific national conditions. Furthermore the paper expounds the necessity and rationality of mere spectators’ duty to rescue, and elaborates the subject and the application scope of mere bystanders’duty to rescue in China. The paper aims to enrich the existing theory on tort law and correct the deficiency of traditional tort law which only pays attention to passive duties.