Research On Legal Problems Of Damage Caused By Multi-ship Collision

With the increasing number of ships in ports and watercourses, the multi-ship collision is becoming more and more frequent. Theories on ship collision damage at home and abroad are usually confined to the two-ship collision, while multi-ship collision is less discussed. Compared with two-ship collision, multi-ship collision is more complicated in the matter of parties, legal relationships, identifications and responsibilities, besides,multi-ship collision usually occurred in a dense port or watercourse, which causes collateral damages to the voyages and economy, therefore a study on multi-ship collision is necessary and urgent. As to the current legislation in China, multi-ship collision damage is rarely involved. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the law related to collision damage.In this paper, the literature analysis, case analysis, comparative research and other methods are utilized. This paper is divided into four parts. The first part discusses the conception,which is the prerequisite of the study. Although the current legislation does not explicitly stipulate the multi-ship collision, since it is a special ship collision phenomenon, the concept and constituent elements can be deduced from the existing ship collision basic theory. The second part divides the multi-ship collision into three types: multiple ships collide before and after, multiple ships collide at same time and multi-ship collision caused by towing, and uses different methods to analyze the relationship and determines the liability. In the third part, the liability division is mainly discussed. This part makes clear that the liability basis and liability division principle of multi-ship collision damage,and distinguishes the unit division method from the division method. Also the relevant provisions on the division of liability for damage caused by multi-ship collision are introduced. The fourth part analyzes the necessity of perfection of the multi-ship collision legislation, and puts forward some effective legislative suggestions based on the theoretical study of the above-mentioned problems.The original idea of this paper is to discuss how to identify the legal relationship of multi-ship collision which can not simply put all the parties involved in a collision relationship like two-ship collision, to try to better identify the responsibility of the ship.