Analysis The Case Of Wuhan Xigerer Co.v.Hongzhi Media Co.Hired Work Contract Dispute

With China's rapid social and economic development,contract of work has gradually been implemented in various fields.However,the application of contract of work is associated with emerging issues in new situations and conditions.Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of disputes and lawsuits about the issue that the work results fail to reach the quality requirement stipulated in the contract.In addition,article 262 of China's Contract Law,the provisions on the liability distribution in such cases,is too general and obscure in the description of tatbestand and liability form.This has resulted in ineffectiveness of its normative functions and has diminished the stability of the law and the inconsistency in the judgment of the same lawsuit,since article 262 entitles more right of discretion to judges in judicial practice.In the lawsuit on dispute of contract for work,the defendant Hongzhi Advertisement Company undertook the billboard manufacture of the plaintiff Xigeer(Wuhan)Company;then the billboards were destroy by strong wind and thus incurred relevant economic loss to the plaintiff.Cognizance of first instance stated that the contractor Hongzhi Advertisement Company shall bear partial liability since the billboards they produced failed to reach the quality requirement and had quality defects.Nevertheless,the second instance concluded that Xigeer(Wuhan)Company shall bear the main legal responsibility for the defects in the design and manufacture of the billboard while provided no straight and direct answer to the quality problem of the contractor—Hongzhi Advertisement Company.In the same case,the judgment and evidence for judgment varied from the first and second instance,which could be served as the evidence for the ambiguity of article 262.The dispute issues of this case could be summarized as the following three parts:firstly,whether the work of the contractor had meet the quality requirement stipulated in the contract of work;secondly,whether the ordering party shall bear the liability;thirdly,what liability shall the contractor undertake in the case that its work failed to meet the quality requirement.In this paper,the author first summarizes the aforementioned three dispute focuses and then makes analysis respectively.Two criteria could be used in the verification of whether or not the results of work delivered by the contractor meet the quality requirements.Firstly,if the work fails to meet the requirements stimulated in the hired work contract,the "defect" should have existed before or when the work completes or before and when the work delivered to the ordering party.Secondly,whether the ordering party shall bear the responsibility is subject to whether the ordering party has fulfilled the obligation of inspection and notification or whether the existed quality problems are concerned with the ordering party.Finally,the author proposed that repayment and reproduction shall be prioritized after analysis the five liability forms.