On The Conflict And Coordination Of The Product Liability Law

The increasingly complexity of products including its structure and functions in modern society, leads to more prominent problems of products quality, making product liability cases abound endlessly. This will not only be against the vital interests of vast majority consumers, but also reduce the operating efficiency of the operators, even worse, disrupt the normal order of market competition. To this end, the United States, the European Union and other developed countries or regions, have established a fairly complete legislation on product liability. In comparison, the product liability legislation in our country needs urgently promoting. As the unified product liability law hasn't been established in our country, and now, the implementary law system is a multiple legal regulation system, which is formed by Product Quality Law of the PRC, Law of the PRC on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers, Tort Liability Law of the PRC, Food Safety Law of the PRC and other laws. In this multiple legal system, different laws make regulations on the product liability with their unique ways, so conflicts and contradictions among the different law systems may exist obviously, seriously affecting the consumers' basic judgment on the right to claim product dispute lawsuit and the application of law in judiciary.Therefore, this paper uses methods of research as textual analysis, comparative analysis and legal economic analysis, based on the analysis of product liability elements and the reference of related foreign legislation models, to analyze the conflict of laws applicable to product liability in our country, and to put forward relevant legislative proposals, so as to improve the laws or regulations on the product liability in our country. And this paper is divided into four parts:The first part analyzes the basic theories of product liability. Mainly from the concepts and features of the product liability, this part analyzes its legal attributes and elements, make a distinction between product liability and product quality responsibility, and clarify the functions of product liability.The second part analyzes the conflicts of laws and regulations applicable to product liability in our country. This part mainly involves the following six aspects. The first is the definition of the scope of “product”, sorting out relative theories and legislation. The second is to explore the identification of the product's “defect”. The third is to analyze the concept of “damage” in product liability and the special treatment toward mental impairment. The fourth is to analyze the application of doctrine of liability fixation and explore the doctrines for different subjects of product liability. The last is to analyze punitive compensation system.In the third part, it analyzes the legislation of product liability established by the US and the EU, and summarizes the experience in the identification of “product” and its “defect”, doctrine of liability fixation, punitive compensation, etc., to provide reference for improving the laws or regulations of product liability in our country.The improved suggestion of coordinating the conflicts of laws in product liability is put forward in the Part IV. Firstly, it points out the necessity of adopting the separate legislation of product liability; Secondly, it shows the rationality of establishing the unified product liability law which is based on the "Tort Liability Law of the PRC”, and it proposes relevant suggestions that mainly focus on product range, defect, loss, doctrine of liability fixation and punitive compensation, etc.