The Research Of Consumption Public Interest Litigation System

Consumption public interest litigation is specifically implemented for consumer’s public interests. Also, it is a new type of lawsuit which aims to protect the interests of consumer group in a disadvantaged position and to perfect the fair consumption market economy. Public interest litigation system originates in the 2nd century BC Roman. The United States is the world’s first nation that implements the legislation on modern public interest litigation, and also is the founding nation of modern public interest litigation. In 2013, article 55 of "Civil Procedure Law" established the public interest litigation system. And it is the first time to make the legislation on civil public interest litigation, but also is the fundamental basis of consumption public interest litigation in China. The consumption public interest litigation has many characteristics, such as its extensive prosecutor, non-for-profit purpose, precautionary infringement and special litigation rules. It is an institutional assurance for the consumer’s rights and interests, and takes both substantive and procedure fairness and justice into account, as well as could prevent from the occurrence of unlawful acts in consuming field. Consumption public interest litigation has been prescribed in principle. From the legislative level, the consumption public interest litigation system has been introduced into our revised "Civil Procedure Law" and "Consumer Law". However, the public interest consumption litigation system in China still exists many problems. For example, its litigation subject qualification is imperfect, and it is lack of both the incentive mechanism and litigation abusing prevention mechanism, and it has no prepositional procedure before consumption public interest litigation, as well as has an unreasonable sharing of litigation expenses. This paper combines with the experience of other national legislation on consumption public interest litigation through the introduction of consumption public interest litigation and the summary of its current situation to propose some measures for perfecting consumption public interest litigation system, such as the improvement of lawsuit accuser qualification system, the establishment of incentive mechanism and litigation abusing prevention mechanism, the establishment of prepositional procedure before consumption public interest litigation, the special processing of public interest litigation costs. These measures aim to protect consumers’legitimate right better.