Say no to objects falling from height, so that tragedy is not repeated

The incident

On the morning of 13 June 2019 a window fell from a high-rise at the Jingji Yujing Huacheng residential compound in Futian district, Shenzhen, and struck a five-year-old boy who was passing. The boy was walking with his mother when the window came down out of the air and struck him, and his mother at once took him to hospital. He was resuscitated three times and lay in intensive care for three days, his condition never encouraging. The case drew wide attention online and among the public, and concerned many people. Sadly, on 16 June, he died in clinical terms after resuscitation failed.

The Yujing Huacheng management office of Shenzhen Shangcheng Property Management Co. Ltd said that it had been actively following the payment of the child's medical expenses since the incident and that, as at 8.25 a.m. on 16 June, the property company, the owners and the tenants had together advanced the whole of the medical costs, more than 85,000 yuan. It said that it would actively assist the departments concerned with the follow-up work and cooperate with the public security authorities in investigating and gathering evidence from several quarters, in the hope that the facts would be established as early as possible and an account given to the victim and his family, and that once responsibility had been determined by the departments concerned it would certainly bear its share in accordance with law and regulation. It had also organised staff, immediately after the incident, to inspect the compound house by house, focusing on windows, balconies and other places where objects might fall.

The law on injury by objects thrown or falling from height

Article 85 of the Tort Liability Law of the People's Republic of China, on liability for harm caused by the falling or dropping of buildings and the like, provides that where a building, structure or other installation, or an object placed or hung on it, falls or drops and causes harm to another person, the owner, manager or user who cannot prove that he is not at fault shall bear tort liability; and that an owner, manager or user who has compensated and identifies another person responsible has the right to recover from that person.

Article 87 of the Tort Liability Law, on liability for harm caused by objects thrown or falling from a building, provides that where an object thrown from a building or an object falling from a building causes harm to another person and the particular tortfeasor cannot be identified, the users of the building who may have caused the harm shall give compensation, unless they can prove that they are not the tortfeasor.

Under these provisions, then, liability for harm caused by thrown or falling objects arises where an object thrown from a building or falling from a building harms another person and the particular tortfeasor cannot be identified; in that case the users of the building who may have caused the harm shall compensate, unless they can prove that they are not the person responsible.

The "users of the building" referred to in the Law are a broad class, including owners, possessors and managers. Tenants, borrowers and others in real life may also, depending on the circumstances, be "users" within the article.

As to how a person shows that he is not the one responsible: generally, a party who may have caused the harm can escape liability by proving the following matters.

(1) That he was not in the building when the harm occurred. Since he was not on the spot, he cannot have thrown anything, and he is therefore not liable.

(2) That he did not possess at all the object that caused the harm.

(3) That the position he occupied was objectively incapable of causing harm by a thrown object.

Only a few days after the Shenzhen boy was struck by the falling window, another child was struck in Nanjing. On 19 June 2019, at Shidai Tiandi Square in Nanjing, a ten-year-old girl passing by was injured by an object thrown from a height by an eight-year-old boy. Her vital signs are currently stable and her life is not in danger.

A reminder, then: a person who throws an object from height or allows one to fall bears not only the civil liability described above but may also be suspected of a crime and bear criminal liability.

Article 115 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, covering the offences of arson, breaching dikes, causing explosions, releasing dangerous substances and endangering public safety by dangerous methods, provides that a person who sets fire, breaches a dike, causes an explosion or releases toxic, radioactive or infectious disease pathogen substances or commits another dangerous act, thereby causing serious injury or death to another person or heavy losses to public or private property, is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, to life imprisonment or to death.

A person who commits the offence in the preceding paragraph negligently is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three and not more than seven years; where the circumstances are relatively minor, to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or to criminal detention.

Article 233 of the Criminal Law, the offence of negligently causing death, provides that a person who negligently causes the death of another is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three and not more than seven years; where the circumstances are relatively minor, to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years. Where this Law provides otherwise, those provisions apply.

Article 235 of the Criminal Law, the offence of negligently causing serious injury, provides that a person who negligently injures another and causes serious injury is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or to criminal detention. Where this Law provides otherwise, those provisions apply.

Preventing and avoiding tragedy from objects falling from height

Objects fall from height when no one is paying attention, and the social harm they do is enormous. Many people have lost their lives to falling objects, and many families have lost a close relative to them. In recent years such incidents have come one after another, and the consequences are heartbreaking every time. Everyone, it may be said, faces the question of safety overhead, and yet the problem has plainly not been taken seriously by the public.

At the Jingji Yujing Huacheng compound in Futian district, Shenzhen, an object had fallen from height not long before the fatal incident, but because no one was hurt no attention was paid. No one held anyone to account, no one took charge, no one carried out an inspection and no one cared, and an object fell again. This time, tragically, the compound lost a life and a family was destroyed.

Preventing and avoiding such tragedies requires that everyone take the problem seriously, that management be strengthened and the law improved, and that several quarters work together to deal with this pain suspended above the city.

First, the three main sources of falling objects should be identified:

the external walls of buildings, advertising boards and light boxes;

refuse dropped casually by residents of upper floors;

flower pots, planks and other idle objects left on balconies.

These potential dangers require property managers and residents to inspect their own windows, balconies and the idle and hanging objects on them at regular intervals and strictly, so as to prevent harm before it occurs; require the departments concerned to inspect the external walls, advertising boards and light boxes of buildings along the streets at regular intervals, so as to protect passers-by effectively; and require every individual to raise his own standards and to stop throwing odds and ends out of the window.

Beyond that, the problem should be tackled at its source: in the design of modern buildings, for example, by taking the safety of objects falling from height into account and by ensuring the quality of construction; by strengthening residents' safety awareness and the corresponding safety rules; and in law, through legislation and enforcement, by increasing the penalties, so that compliance moves from compulsion to habit.

Objects falling from height do great social harm, and the question of safety cannot be neglected for a moment; everyone should take it more seriously. Every object thrown from a height may bring a tragedy about. Say no to objects falling from height: it begins with each individual, and the tragedy must not happen again.