Study On Tort Liabilitiy Of Educational Institutions

Although the responsibility identification of educational institutions is stipulated in Tort Liability Law, judicial practices showed, the responsibility of educational institutions is excessively identified by people’s court, as a result, the compensation responsibility is directly aggravated and the aggravation of compensation responsibility poses direct influences upon the underage students’ right to receive education and the benign development of Chinese education. Therefore, accurate identification of tort liabilities of educational institutions is still a pressing problem to be solved by Chinese law.Whether educational institutions undertake the responsibility of guardianship for the underage students directly affects people’s court’s identification of tort liabilities of educational institutions. There are two theories now, recognition of guardian relationship(guardian relationship theory) and denial of guardian relationship(non-guardian relationship theory). The author hereto analyzes contents of educational institutions’ responsibility of guardianship and whether educational institutions can be deemed as the guardian, resulting in that the relationship between educational institutions and the underage students should not be deemed as the guardian and the person under guardianship but the educator and the educated and the administrator and the administrated. Educational institutions are mainly responsible for educating and administrating the underage students. The accurate identification the relationship between educational institutions and the underage students can completely eradicate excessive liabilities of educational institutions arising from people’s court’s identification of guardianship.Clause 38, 39 and 40 of Tort Liability Law stipulate that fault liability presumption, fault liability and complementary liability are applicable to people’s court’s identification of tort liabilities of educational institutions, all of them should be deemed as fault principles. In judicial practice, people’s court doesn’t often take fault principles as the only doctrine of liability fixation but adopt other methods of liability fixation by mistake or confusion, resulting in misjudged cases. Thus, accurate application of doctrines of liability fixation will protect educational institutions’ legitimate rights to the greatest extent and safeguard social harmony and stability.The duty of care of educational institutions, as a major reference for the defenses of the infringement disputes of educational institutions, is an important standard measuring whether educational institutions should undertake the liability for both Tort Liability Law as well as relevant lawsand regulations.The duty of care of educational institutions mainly consists of “legal duty of care” and “agreed duty of care”.People’s court is prone to impute the liability to educational institutions due to the inability of covering all “legal duties of care” by existing Chinese laws and regulations.The in-depth study of “legal duty of care” can not only overcoming the above phenomena but also correctly guiding educational institutions duties of care as well as minimizing erroneous judgments of people’s court.