(The author of this article is a professor and doctoral supervisor of Southwest University of Political Science and Law).
Recently, the first-instance verdict of the man's rights protection case in the much-watched "Chengdu Metro was framed ** incident" was announced. The court held that the two women did not constitute an infringement of the general personality rights of the men involved, so the court did not support the plaintiff's claim that the woman and Chengdu Metro publish an apology statement, read an apology statement at the subway station involved in the case for 10 consecutive days, and compensate 50,000 yuan for losses.
At a time when the rule of law country, the rule of law, and the rule of law society are advancing in an integrated manner, the social and legal issues reflected by this case are particularly worthy of attention.
With regard to tort liability, courts generally start from the three conditions of fault, damage, and causation. In this case, the court did not support the plaintiff's claim, which we can also analyze from these three aspects:
First of all, is there any fault in the legal sense of the law?No. On the one hand, in the social environment where public places occur from time to time, although the woman concerned is a little sensitive in protecting her rights, she still has a certain degree of reasonableness;On the other hand, the court has ascertained that after the misunderstanding was clarified, the woman in question accepted the criticism and education of **, and promptly bowed and apologized to the plaintiff on the spot, and also offered to bear her transportation expenses as a remedy. Based on this, it can be considered that the woman did not have the intention or negligence to infringe on the plaintiff's rights and interests at the time of her act.
Second, there is no damage in tort for the plaintiff. When personality rights are violated, the legal damage is usually related to the victim's inner feelings or external social evaluation. The woman did not make public the misunderstanding between her and the plaintiff, and apologized on the spot in a timely manner after the facts were clarified, and the manner and time of her apology could basically eliminate the possible impact of the misunderstanding. As far as the feelings of ordinary people are concerned, although the misunderstood person is inevitably a little "depressed", it is still within the scope of tolerance, so it is not appropriate to conclude that he has suffered damage that must be remedied by law.
Third, since there is no fault or loss, there is no way to talk about the causal relationship that is a constitutive element of infringement.
In the same way, the subway does not need to bear tort liability. Because the court's judgment shows that the subway staff mediated the on-board dispute in a timely manner and guided them to the public security organ to resolve the problem with the consent of the parties, it should be determined that it was a reasonable performance of duties and a specific way to perform the safety and security obligations on behalf of the subway company as a public carrier, so the subway company was not subjectively at fault for infringing on the plaintiff's rights and interests.
No remedy means no right, but there are rules for remedy. When rights are infringed or there is a danger of being infringed, the parties enjoy two ways to protect their rights: self-remedies and public remedies. The former refers to the fact that the subject of rights relies on his own strength to protect his rights by carrying out acts of self-defense or self-help within the scope permitted by law. The latter refers to the fact that the subject of rights resorts to public power to protect his rights. In practice, these two approaches are sometimes used intersecting or combined.
In this case, when the woman in the subway car mistakenly thought that the shining point on the man's shoes was ** equipment, she immediately initiated self-reliance to defend her rightsSubsequently, the parties resolved the dispute by seeking subway security and public security organs, which is the use of public remediesAfter the incident, the man's rights protection by publishing information on the Internet is a self-remedy, while initiating a lawsuit is a public remedy.
Disputes or disputes inevitably arise in life, and reasonable positive evaluations can be given to the actions of both parties involved in the case to protect their rights and handle disputes, but it is not appropriate to over-interpret them.
The law protects rights and allows for self-reliance under certain conditions, but rights protection should not be overly sensitive, rights should not be abused, and the boundaries prescribed by law should not be exceeded, let alone harm the legitimate rights and interests of others.
The law protects rights and provides adequate public remedies, but the law advocates peace and does not encourage recourse to justice, after all, the limited judicial resources supported by taxpayers cannot be too much to be consumed in the trivialities of life.
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