On the afternoon of June 13rd, at the gate of a fruit shop in Yujing Huacheng District of Shenzhen, a five-year-old boy was hit on the head by a window that fell from the 20th floor when walking by. At 5 a.m. on the 16th, the boy died because of invalid rescue. According to the Sub-district Office, the resident involved in this accident said that the window fell while being pushed out, and the property management company as well as all the owners have been asked to check the safety of facilities. The other window also fell in the residential area on May 22nd because an owner living on the eighth floor violated regulations when installing an air condition, which caused the glass to fall into the pedestrian aisle. Luckily, nobody was injured in that accident.
The article 85 of the Tort Law stipulates that, if the building, structure or other facilities as well as their placing articles and suspenders fall and cause damage to others, the owner, manager or user who fails to prove that he or she is innocent, shall bear tort liability. If there is any other person who is responsible, the owner, manager or user shall be entitled to be reimbursed from other responsible people after their compensation.
The aforementioned dropping, which means the buildings and structures(such as dams and bridges), or any component, placing article, suspender of them and other facilities fall down. For example, the dropping s of a chandelier, a tile, a flower pots placed on the balcony, outer wall of any building, an advertising sign as the ancillary facility of a building and so on.
The owner is a person who owns a building or other facilities. The manager refers to those who is responsible for the management and maintenance of the buildings caring of the placing article and the hanging objects, such as the property management company. The user refers to the person who uses the building or other facilities because of leasing, borrowing or another purpose.
The involved owner, who pushed out the window and caused a window glass dropping accident which made a boy’s death has to undertake the liability for tort, unless he can prove the accident wasn’t his fault, like he has performed the necessary duty of safety guarantee or has taken necessary protection measures to prevent the window from falling.
The property management company is not the direct infringer, so whether it should bear the liability should be considered from the perspective of whether it has fulfilled its management responsibility. Whether the property management company shall be responsible for the window maintenance, different cases have different identification. In this case, if there is evidence that proves the property management company is responsible for the window maintenance, for example, the owner and the property management company have written agreement beforehand, the property management company shall bear the liability. The reason is that there was already a window falling in May, but the property management company, as the manager, was negligent in management and did not check the safety of wall or another facility in time. The property management company should have foreseen the risk and taken measures to avoid it, but failed to fulfill the obligation of safety guarantee within the reasonable limit. Therefore, the property management company should bear the corresponding supplementary responsibility for the death of the boy.
What if you are not sure whose dropping object it is? The article 87 of the Tort Law stipulates that, if anything is thrown out or dropped from the building which causes damage to others but difficult to identify the specific infringer, the users of the building who may cause harm shall compensate the victim except that they can prove they are not the infringer. Last year, Zhang, who was unable to find the owner of the dog that had smashed herself into a paraplegic, sued the landlord and all the tenants.
Sometimes your negligence may deprive of a life. All the owners, managers and users of the buildings or structures, shall often check the safety of the buildings and its affiliated facilities to prevent the similar tragedy from happening again.
