China Environmental Law

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Let’s take a look at the environmental provisions in the draft of China’s Tort Liability Law released for comment by the Nat’l People’s Cong. on November 6.

What don’t they do? First, they don’t create any new environmental torts.  Every major, media-specific environmental law already establishes liability on the part of pollutant dischargers, for damages caused by their discharges.
Here are two typical provisions from the Solid Waste Law:

Article 85: Whoever has caused the environmental pollution by solid waste shall eliminate the hazardousness, compensate loss according to law, and adopt measures to recover the original situation of the environment.

Article 86: The defendant of a lawsuit for damage compensation due to environmental pollution caused by solid waste shall bear the burden of proof on identification as prescribed by law and demonstrating no cause between the defendant’s acts and the consequence of damage.

Articles 65 and 66 of the draft Tort Liability Law simply reinforce this preexisting liability scheme.
That leaves just two other environmental specific provisions.  Article 67 provides for joint and several liability among two “polluters” and the means to determine the split of liability among joint tortfeasors.  Article 68 provides that if a third party is responsible for the release of pollutants from a facility, the injured party may sue either the third-party or the facility.  If the injured party sues and recovers from the facility, the facility may sue the third party for indemnification.  The environmental provisions do not permit a request for punitive damages, unlike the provisions dealing with product liability (Article 47).

That that was easy.  Hello again to all and great to be back to chinaenvironmentallaw.com.