The Constitutive Requirements Upon The Reputation Torts From The Case Of Fan Zeng

In January,2012, the highly concerned case which the painter Fan Zeng v. the collectorGuo Qingxiang for reputation infringement was sentenced by the Beijing first intermediatepeople’s Court. Guo Qingxiang was sued to the court for that he had written a critical article“Artists should speak rely on his works”. Both The Beijing Changping District people’s courtand the Beijing first intermediate people’s court judged Guo Qingxiang had constituteddefamation.This paper is based on the introduction of the case, and makes an in-depth analysis on itfrom the perspective of law, besides, it puts forward some related thnking in order that it willprovide some trains of thought to the judicial practice in similar reputation infringement case.This paper is divided into three parts:The first part: The introduction of the case.it consists of case synopsis, the hearing andthe focus of controversy. Guo Qingxiang published an article to criticize the fickleness of thepainting circles, call and advocate sincere, responsible spirit of art. However, the painter FanZeng thought the article is for him, so, he appealed to the court for his reputation.. The focusof our research is to discuss whether Guo Qingxiang’s acts constitute defamation and how toset the standard of the reputation infringement cognizance.The second part: Analysis of the legal issues related to Fan Zeng’s reputation right case.The infringement of the reputation right as general tort includes four aspects. Firstly, it mustbe illegal behavior of infringing the right of reputation.Illegal actions include defamation andinsult, in order to judge the defamation, there must be authentic and reasonable standards; forinsulting behavior, it should adopt fair comment principle to judge. Secondly, it must lead tothe consequences of damage. Damaging consequences include lower social evaluation andmental injury; only the harmful consequences can determine whether the act has met therequirements of standard. Thirdly, it must have the causal relationship between the illegalbehavior and damage. And the causal relationship is not self-evident. Fourthly,the actor hassubjective fault. The identification of behavior of fault must according to the principle of faultliability; and the specific content of fault includes intention and negligence. Finally, based onthe analysis and discussion, I sum up the steps of the applicable law of defamation cases.The third part: Conclusion of Fan Zeng’s reputation right case. Based on the analysis theory in the second part and combined with the case’s facts, I have made a conclusion. Onone hand, starting from the first and second instance court verdict, after making a detailedanalysis of the article, I think the defendant’s article does not insult calumniatory content; onthe other hand,after the interpretation of the case from the angle of reputation infringement. Iinsist that the defendant in the case does not constitute defamation.The fourth part: Reflection on the Fan Zeng defamation case. Based on the case analysisin the second part, I collect similar cases in the judicial practice as much as possible, combingand analyze them. According to that, I summarize the existing problems in that judgment, andmake a further thinking that in the judicial practice, how the judges correctly judge thereputation infringement cases caused by the critical articles.