On Antecedent Action In Liability For Omission

The traditional tort law mainly includes tortious liability and omission tort is the exception. With the development of society, interpersonal relationship is more and more complex and there are more and more omission torts occurring. In order to solve emerging problems, enlarging the source of act duty in omission tort is very necessary. The provision of antecedent action can enlarge the source of act duty in omission tort. Antecedent action refers to the behavior which can lead to act duty in omission tort. In this regard, antecedent action means that actor’s behavior lead to a continuous actual danger that makes the civil rights and interests protected by law at risk. If the actor didn’t do any positive act to replace dangerous or help the people who have suffered injury and the damage violated the civil rights and interests protected by the civil law, the actor should be responsible to the tort liability brought by the injury. The paper is divided into5chapters to talk about the antecedent action.Chapter one presents the history of antecedent action. Antecedent action stemmed from The criminal law field of Roman Law. Afterwards, the German court confirmed that antecedent action is one of the origins of act duty. In China, there are not many concrete researches on antecedent action. But looking back the development of the act duty in China, the development of security duty is the generalized antecedent action duty in China. As a result, learning the security control duty will deepen the understanding of antecedent action.Chapter two presents the definition of antecedent action. Antecedent action refers to the behavior which can lead to act duty in omission Tort. It is not the same as the legal act or the tort. The scope of antecedent action is not limited to illegal act and the act of liability,while it doesn’t consist of criminal act and omission. The precondition for antecedent action to lead to act duty includes: antecedent action should be done by the actor himself; the danger brought by antecedent action should be realistic and urgent; there is a natural causation between antecedent action and the danger.Chapter three presents the comparison between antecedent action and relevant concepts. The provision of antecedent action can offset the defect of the rule of security duty in the tort law in China. Antecedent action duty is not moral duty. Both of them have some relations, but they are not the same as each other.Chapter four presents the relationship between antecedent action and other origins of act duty. The paper makes a distinction between antecedent action duty and other act duties, so that we can make the antecedent action duty into practice more properly.Chapter five presents constitutive requirements of omission tort result from antecedent action and its form of responsibility. The form of responsibility of the actor of the antecedent action is direct liability and complementary liability.