The Research On The Liability Caused By Unknown Falling Objects From High-rised Buildings

Unknown falling objects of the building causing damages refers to the tort that the objects thrown out by the building users from high-rise building or falling from the building cause damages to the injured party, and it is hard to fix the true liable person for the tort. The feature of the damage liability caused by unknown falling objects from building lies in the difficulty for fixing the concrete liable person. Its doctrine of liability fixation should be that of strict liability. The relief to the injured party in this kind of cases fully represents the function of Tort Liability Law for relief and compensation. In our country, the legislation about the damage liability caused by unknown falling objects from building has problems such as the unclear procedure of law’s application, the unclear conditions for compensation’s application and the unclear rules of compensation liability, which lead to the difficulties in the trial of this kind of cases. Though it is hard to fix the concrete liable person, the public security organization should be actively involved and start criminal investigation, for severe damages caused to the person or the person’s property. If it is failed to conclude the investigation successfully, the injured party can sue to the court depending on the opinion paper of investigation from the public security organization, which means that the doctrine of the criminal procedure front-loading applies to it. As to the damages caused to the injured party, the law provides that "the building users possible to cause the damage" bear the liability of compensation, which is several, not average. It means that one user bears the liability to the extent that is fully measured by integrated factors such as the number of persons living in the house, the house area, and the storey height. Roman Law dabbled in the provisions of the damage caused by objects thrown out from building, but the key research target of the continental law system which inherited the tradition of Roman Law is the tort of buildings. In the Anglo-American countries with fully developed insurance system, the damage caused by the unknown objects falling from building can be fully compensated by insurance. Except for improving the legislation about the damages caused by unknown falling objects from building, we also need to draw lessons from the Anglo-American countries’practice that prevents and relieves the damages caused by the unknown objects falling from building though establishing forced insurance system, making full use of the promoting function of the property management companies, and ways of national relief.