On Application Of Article12of Tort Liability Law In Automobile Traffic Accident Cases

Article12in Tort Liability Law of the People’s Republic of China has a goodresearch value in theory; it is a milestone for the un-internuncial joint torts and it ismaverick on the behavior pattern of several tort and the burden sharing ofcompensatory liability. As the last one of the several tort articles in the generalprinciples of Tort Liability Law, it composes the complete logical system of severaltort with article8,9,10and11; such system reflects the intention of lawmakers andembodies the lawmakers’ product on the theoretical research of several tort and it isthe golden combination of articles created by scholars of theoretical cycle and judgesof practical circle in accordance with the requirements of several tort case. As one ofthe members, Article12is the sole article that bears the “shared liability” and due tosuch “shared liability”, the “respective implementation” of Article12has thetheoretical value for enlarging or reducing the interpretation and “assuming respectiveliabilities” and “assuming compensation liabilities evenly” of Article12has the roomfor theoretical discussion.The case for the liability dispute of automobile traffic accident is under the caseof whole tort liability dispute and its caseload occupies a dominant position. Thejudicial interpretations of Law of the People’s Republic of China on Road TrafficSafety, Interpretation of Supreme People’s Court on Some Issues Concerning theApplicable Law of Road Traffic Accident Damage Compensation Cases andInterpretation of Supreme People’s Court on Some Issues Concerning the ApplicableLaw of Personal Damage Compensation Cases are also combined with Tort LiabilityLaw and play an important role in the judgment. The statistical materials in the studyroom of Supreme People’s Court show that the road transportation safety cases triedby courts throughout the country tend to increase yearly. For the civil cases ofautomobile traffic accidents, it is obtained from the research information from theresearch group of No.1civil court in the First Intermediate People’s Court ofChongqing and the statistical information in the Judicial Cases Bank of PekingUniversity Law, the cases that two vehicles collide and hurt the third party (including passengers or people outside the vehicles) can be found everywhere. There are manydisputes on the law application of such cases in the theoretical and practical cycles;some people think that the tort-feasor should bear joint liability and some peoplethink that the tort-feasor should bear shared liability.When the automobile traffic accident meets Article12of Tort Liability Law,many problems in the domain of several tort may appear in the typical cases. Shrinkthe case types applicable to Article12of Tort Liability Law and restrict them into theliability dispute of automobile traffic accident, and then disassemble Article12ofTort Liability Law into “more than two people”,“respective implementation”,“oneand single injury” and “burden sharing”, corresponding to the behavioral agent,behavior pattern, manifestation of damages and burden sharing in automobile trafficaccident case; finally, the corresponding conclusion can be obtained after the concreteanalysis. For the comprehension of “more than two people”, it is obtained through thelaw application method that more than two people only refer to tort-feasor; the“respective implementation” is expounded through case enumeration method. Atpresent, joint infringe without consciousness may present the characteristic ofcategorization on the behavior pattern. Such typical road accident cases can helpanswer the hot questions of several tort, including the rationality between jointnegligence and joint crime through negligence and their distinctions and applicationconditions and the relation and distinction between direct combination and indirectcombination and between joint implementation and respective implementation in theaspect of the behavior pattern of tort-feasor. During the argumentation on “one andsingle injury”, the typical cases and special cases are enumerated to illustrate thegeneral conditions and special circumstances of one and single injury; for the “burdensharing”, the positions and functions of the consideration factors of burden sharing,including “fault”,“causation” and “reasonable predictable capacity” and theirapplication sequences in the automobile traffic accident cases are expounded.After the comprehensive survey on the above factors, the mind mapping modecan be applied to limit and shrink the application scope of the article from the fouraspects and case categorization method and article exclusion method can be used to summarize the application process of Article12of Tort Liability Law in automobiletraffic accident cases.