The Research Of Legal Issues On Civil Liability Subject Of Ship Oilspill Pollution Damages

With the deepening of China’s reform and opening up, foreign economic and trade exchanges has been becoming more and more frequent, and after which the development of shipping business has also been droved. In this background, the risk of shipping business has become wider, except for the traditional risk of goods and ship, the larger-scale of ship oil spill accident and enhancement of the environmental awareness has been becoming another risk for the business to prevent and control. The legal mechanism for preventing and controlling the risk adopted by our country is a double-track approach. However, the lack of domestic law in this area has resulted in lots of predicaments, such as the difficulty in joining of the international law and domestic law, and the application of domestic cases in such area.In the area of tort, the subject of civil liability is the core issue of attributing the civil liability. Therefore, finding out it should be solved firstly, especially in dealing the ship oil spill maritime tort dispute. In the situation of unilateral liability, who should be responsible for the liability has become one of the issues which is ambiguous. How should the ship owners, ship operators, charterers, or other people related take the responsibility? And as for the inland ship situation, the affiliation of ship has made this issue much more complicated, as the actual ship owner is different from the registered ship owner. What’s more, in the situation of mutual collision which coursed one of the ship spilling oil, should the ship which has not spilled oil take the responsibility? And if the subject could not take the responsibility, could the insurer or financial guarantor of the subject be sued by the complainant directly? If the subject had not taken this kind of insurance and could not take the responsibility, is there a second safeguard mechanism could be used to cover it? Unfortunately, the law in our country has not provided a clear guide.Except for the foreword and epilogue, this paper has been divided into 5 parts, totally almost forty thousand words.Part Ⅰ:The form, basis and feature of civil liability of ship oil spill pollution damage. As the research topic is the civil liability subject of ship oil spill, when researching the basic issue of the topic, the civil liability of ship oil spill, unilateral and multilateral civil liability subject has been served as the perspective for studying the liability. This perspective also relates to the basis of this liability, which includes environmental law, maritime law, tort law etc. However, the basis of this liability also has its own features, the mixture of strict liability and liability of fault, the socialization of taking the liability so as to balance the function of the law.Part Ⅱ:International and domestic provisions on the scale of civil liability of ship oil spill, civil liability and exemption. This part mainly focus on analyzing the legislation of ship oil spill in the international treaties and advanced shipping countries’ domestic law related, so as to explore purposes of their legislations and guide our country’s related amendment.Part Ⅲ:Research on the provisions of the scale of civil liability of ship oil spill, liability and exemption of our country. This part is a follow-up of part Ⅱ, which is discussing our country’s judicial practices on ship oil spill which related to the scale of civil liability of ship oil spill, liability and exemption. Through this discussion, the problem of it has been revealed.Part Ⅳ:Several issues on the provisions of the scale of civil liability of ship oil spill, liability and exemption of our country. This part mainly focus on blanks and vague of our country’s provisions of the scale of civil liability of ship oil spill, liability and exemption.Part Ⅴ:Perfection advice on civil liability subject of ship oil spill for our country. This part is based on the analysis and summary of the problem occurred during the judicial practice of our country. Through which pointedly proposed some advises on the appropriate way of application of the law related, perfection of the procedural provisions on the use of the limitation fund, and refining of the oil pollution fund.