Thesis on Defect of Products

Person who wrongfully damaged others'' rights only need to take responsibility in negligence situation under the tradition pretext of “negligence liability”. However, “product accident” becomes more frequently happened, we still do not find the suita-ble solution for it in the tradition legal system. It also breeds the individual “product liability” systems.
In the high-division-of-labor of consumer society, consumers have no enough professional knowledge for avoiding the potential risk of products. Under this background, they could only do consumption by usual use or consumption and trust the products would not cause any damages. For continuing mechanism for division of labor, law system as important system for keeping people’s life in suitable way should protect this trust for division of labor among people. And it should be principal for dispersing the damage risk of product accident.
The purpose of Civil Law Article 191-1 and Consumer Protection Law Article 7 is that protect this kind of trust for division of labor and overthrow an negligence liabil-ity. These two Articles really get out of the system, which always attribute responsi-bility to human behavior. It would induce the judgment would come to safety of products”, so defect of products would become important issues.
Defect of products would mean that products do not meet the standard of the rea-sonably expected safety. Based on trust for division of labor, this standard of the safety would be: normal consumer expectation for safety. In detail, if the product has accordance with the expectation, the condition of product is widely known by con-sumer, and even risk as well. It will make consumer take those risk according principal of self-responsibility, when the product causes the damage. In the other hand, if product would not reach the anticipation of consumer for product safety, the condi-tion of product is not widely known by consumer, and consumer have no knowledge for the risk. Damage resulted from the products has already break the trust of the nor-mal consumer; the product manufacturers should take this responsibility.
Finally, for conducting the “normal consumer expectation”, we need some im-portant to consider.The Enforcement Rules of Consumers Protection Law Article 5, legislators show the “the presentation of the product”, “the use to which it could rea-sonably be expected that the product would be put”, and “the time when the product was put into circulation” as the factors. Besides, the regulations of safety of products, kind of products, and the state of scientific and technical knowledge at the time when he put the product into circulation could all influence the consideration for the safety of product. Furthermore, all examples above are only one of “factors”, and any one of factor has no decisive influence for it. We should go back to “expectation of consum-ers” for the principal of defect safety.