Research On The Tort Liability Of The Third-party Platform Of Food Delivery

E-commerce has become the main form of promoting business innovation and transformation in the current digital age.One of the highlights of the vigorous development of e-commerce in China is the emergence and popularity of online trading platforms.The combination of the food industry and online trading platforms has created many opportunities.Today,There are more and more catering operators trading goods and services through online third-party platforms.The “O2O” model of food delivery emerged as the times require.As a new marketing model of food delivery industry,the “online to offline” model means combining offline business opportunities with the Internet to make the Internet a platform of offline transaction.In the context of diversified payment methods,in addition to traditional restaurant packaging and telephone ordering,take-out ordering based on Internet and social media has become increasingly popular.The popularity of smartphone and the expansion of social networks have promoted the influence of e-commerce in daily life.At present,the mainstream operating model of the “O2O” platform is divided into a light mode in which the merchants distribute meals by themselves and a heavy mode that platform provides distribution services to merchants.In the fierce market competition,infringement disputes based on third-party delivery platforms also occur frequently.Firstly,this thesis makes a basic introduction of the subject of this study,the third-party platform of food delivery,with the emergence of e-commerce platforms and the development of the food delivery industry.By sorting out the business model of the food delivery platform,this thesis further establishes the subject status of the third-party platform of food delivery.There are different opinions on the determination of the subject status of the third-party platform.After analyzes the existing domestic scholars' relevant theories on the legal status of network service platforms,this thesis draws its own opinion,that is,when viewing the status of third-party platforms,it is not necessary to refer to traditional civil and commercial legal relations considering network platform trading is a type of new business model.Secondly,this thesis discusses the legal relationships involved in third-party platforms of food delivery and sorts out the relevant legal regulations.Legal liability can only be explored if the legal relationship is recognized.According to the correspondence of liability and obligation,this thesis analyzes the legal obligations of the third-party platform of food delivery so as to establishes the legal responsibility of third-party platform.The civil liability of the platform includes liability for breach of contract and liability for tort.This thesis focuses on the infringement liability of the platform.This thesis analyzes and summarizes the concept of the delivery service on the e-commerce platform and the related research and development of the operation mode,based on the existing legislation as a starting point to sorts out the composition and bearing method of tort liability of food delivery platforms.Meanwhile,this thesis uses examples such as “ele” and “Meituan Takeaway” to analyze the status of infringement liability of third-party platforms for food delivery as well as some existing problems.After this,this thesis puts forward targeted countermeasures and suggestions on the tort liability of food delivery third-party platform.The suggestions mainly include perfect the application of law,clarify the application of the attribution principle and the distribution of burden of proof,and improve the universal adoption of advanced payment mechanism of third-party platforms,etc.With the suggestions above,this thesis wishes to avoid the situation where the three parties of the food delivery business blaming each other and arguing about unclear rights and responsibilities,and to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and form a healthy market order.