Tort Liability Of Co-Drinking

China has a long history of drinking culture.The ancient people always say, “A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet” and the toasts develop fast nowadays. For example, there is a sayings “If we are great friends,we should drink it all in one mouthful. If we are nodding acquaintances, we can just sip it”. The blossom of drinking culture also caused too many lamentable tragedies, for example too great pleasure will bring about sadness and death after drinking.In recent years, there are some disputes and conflicts caused by co-drinking all over the country. The court tried to resolve various conflicts and disputes arising from codrinking through legal channels. However, there are various types of civil judgments about co-drinking. For example, the relief of victims is considered too much in some judgments of the courts, so that those co-drinkers who should not have been liable to compensation have already assumed the liability, which does harm to the people's freedom of communication. A majority of courts failed to determine the nature of co-drinking act. Some of them recognized it as the friendship behavior, while others believe it is tort act. There are also disputes on the nature of the duty of safety care undertaken by co-drinkers and conflicts whether the co-drinkers should bear the joint liability or share liability.After categorizing co-drinking cases in our judicial practice as well as investigating and learning the experiences in dealing with disputes resulting from alcoholic beverages from foreigner countries, the paper analyzed how to deal with the theoretical problems of co-drinking cases in our judicial practice including distinguishing the co-drinking act as friendly behavior and the friendly behavior which may turn into the tort act, making sure that co-drinkers' duty of safety care are the legal duty of safety care and the principle for the equitable liability should be applied to co-drinking cases cautiously, and confirming the foundation of the joint liability shouldered by co-drinkers. In the meantime, the paper gave some specific proposals to the co-drinking cases of the judicial practice such as establishing clear appearance standard of the drunkenness as the start of the duty of safety care, determining the connotation of the co-drinkers' duty of safety care, making sure we should take the principle of liability for fault as the fundamental and the principle for the equitable liability as the exception, and telling the similarity and difference between co-drinking organizers and participants' liability and responsibility.