Study on Distribution of The Burden of Proof in Claim for Oil Pollution Damage
As a special type of tort liability, the civil liability for oil pollution damage is a little different from others in that the doctrine of strict liability is applied and the burden of proof is inverted as it is the infringing party who should be responsible for producing evidence to prove the existence of exemptions. However, the claimant shall still bear the burden of proof regarding the infringing act and the harmful consequence. Since the wording of provisions regarding the burden of proof in Chinese domestic laws and related legal documents is a little ambiguous and conflicting with each other, there are always hot arguments regarding the distribution of burden of proof between the claimant and infringing party in Chinese judicial practice, e.g. to which extent and standard should the claimant prove the infringing act, whether it would be sufficient to prove a spillage accident takes place in a certain position or the contamination of his sea farm by oil from the vessel should be proved, and whether this issue should be identified as a factor of infringing act which should be proved by the claimant, or as a factor of causal connections which should be proved by the infringing person. This paper is intended to discuss the distribution of the burden of proof between the claimant and the infringing party in details. At first, the general principles of constitute requirements for a pollution liability is discussed and then the burden of proof regarding the aforesaid constitutive requirement is discuss in details from the view of international society and Chinese domestic laws, so as to achieve the doctrine guiding our application of the aforesaid legal provisions of inversion of burden of proof, and try to work out a more practicable and detailed method for the distribution of burden of proof.
burden of proof distribution of burden of proof inversion of burden of proof oil pollution damage
Shen Xiaoping
Law Dalian Maritime University, Member of IIML
国际会议
Intl Conference on Marine Pollution Liability & Policy(国际海洋油污会议--海洋污染责任与政策国际研讨会)
大连
英文
298-308
2009-06-04（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）