Keeping an eye on product liability
The two-month old PRC Tort Liability Law increases foreign business’ potential exposure to product liability claims generated from the Chinese market
Issue: September 2010
Keywords (click to search):
Taylor Wessing
product liability
tort
The PRC Tort Liability Law (中华人民共和国侵权责任法) (Tort Law) became effective on July 1 2010, and asides from setting up the general framework of the tort liability regime, this new law touched upon some specific areas including product liability.
Product liability has already been covered by the existing PRC General Principles for the Civil Law (中华人民共和国民法通则) effective from January 1 1987 (Civil Code) and the PRC Product Quality Law (中华人民共和国产品质量法) last revised on July 8 2000 (Product Quality Law). This article will consider the impact of this new Tort Law in the field of product liability, and the implications it may have upon foreign companies which operate in the Chinese market.
Key decisive factor: Defect
The Tort Law connects product tort liability to the existence of a “defect”. Although the Tort Law itself does not provide for a definition of “defect”, such definition can be found in...
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