Research On Plaintiff Qualification Of Consumer’s Public Interest Litigation

Consumption drives economic growth. Consumers are important members of market economy and consumption is the starting point of production and reproduction. Compared to the past, the protection of consumers’ rights appears more significant. In the face of consumption disputes, most consumers will choose to consult with producers and sellers, invite a third party to mediate or lodge a complaint to settle disputes. However, with the increase of mass consumption disputes, these reliefs have not effectively safeguarded the interests of consumers. In order to better safeguard the socialist market economy order and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, our civil procedure law explicitly stipulated the public interest litigation in the latest amendment. It breaks through the limitations of traditional civil litigation and marks the start of the civil public interest litigation in our country. In the past, there are only theoretical researches on the public interest litigation, lacking specific practical experience. The provisions of the law is oversimple, leaving many blanks during the operation of consumer’s public interest litigation, especially the plaintiff qualification to be solved. Otherwise, disputes may not be settled through litigation effectively, greatly weakening the role of consumer’s public interest litigation. In order to solve this problem, this paper will be divided into three parts to explore our country’s consumer’s public interest litigation plaintiff qualification system.The first part is the overview of consumer’s public interest litigation plaintiff qualification system in China, discussing the concept of public interest litigation, theoretical basis of public interest litigation system, legal basis and practical basis respectively.The second part analyzes the difficulties faced by the consumer’s public interest litigation plaintiff qualification system. They are ‘individual consumer does not have the right to file the consumer’s public interest litigation’, ‘there are strict controls on consumer association of the plaintiff qualification’, ‘laws do not stipulate other organizations besides the consumer association ’, ‘provisions have been not made clearly regarding the authority’.The third part is suggestion for consumer’s public interest litigation, which is the focus of this article. The litigation filed by individual consumers, the consumers association and procuratorial organs can be improved. And this article puts forward suggestion on the order for plaintiffs to file the litigation, so as to establish a comprehensive and multi-level protection for consumers.This paper reaches to the conclusion that plaintiffs include consumer protection groups, individual consumers and procuratorial organs. Procuratorial organs can only be the plaintiff in the case which has national influence, such as unfair competition and antitrust, etc. This shall be stipulated explicitly in the legislation. For general cases, individual consumers or consumer groups can file a lawsuit, which do not need specific provisions.In terms of the order, we can draw lessons from the arrangement of the retrial, with mainly relying on the folk and official organs coming second. Consumer groups should be put in first place and individual in the second place. Only when the consumer groups and individual consumers cannot or are negligent to file a lawsuit, the procuratorial organs can attend the consumer’s public litigation as a plaintiff.