제조물책임법상 증명책임 완화에 관한 소고 - 자동차 화재사고를 중심으로 -

Abstract

In relation to the burden of proof of consumers in the area of product liability, the courts have eased the burden of proof with precedent case theory, and the amended Product Liability Act of 2017 came to stipulate the statutory principle of alleviation of the customer burden of proof. In principle, alleviating the burden of proof to the consumer who must prove the defect and damage and the causal relationship, is that only the manufacturer who is an expert in the production process of the product can know what kind of defect existed in the product and whether the damage occurred due to the defect. This is because there are hard specificities that cannot be revealed by the general public. That is the result of considering the skewed presence of evidence. It is clear that manufacturers generally have more evidence than consumers. However, the product may not exist in its original state at the time of supply, such as being deformed during use or disassembled or reassembled for repair. In this respect, the evidence for deformation can be present skewed to the customer. In this respect estimating defects in relation to the proof of the fact that it was used normally. Therefore asking for the proof that the proper management of the product to the customer- especially for automobiles requiring continuous management - was not neglected will not seem to be excessive requirement. In addition, when a product is lost due to fire, etc., and the manufacturer wants to find out the defect in the product, the manufacturer has no choice but to estimate the cause of the accident with only the fragmentary information presented by the consumer who occupied the product. It is often a problem in automobile fires, which are characterized by being severely deformed and difficult to determine the ignition point and cause. For the relief of the burden of proof in a case of damage caused by a fire accident, it is not easy to collect direct evidence about the ignition, and the characteristics of the fire accident, which have limitations in identifying the cause through analysis, should be considered. do. If the facts are unclear, it is also worth considering a plan to actively utilize the reconciliation recommendation decision or conciliation procedure rather than drawing a conclusion of winning-losing according to the distribution of the burden of proof.