On October 11, 2022, the Supreme People's Court released the top ten typical cases with people's assessors participation in trial, among which a case of Guangzhou Maritime Court was included, i.e., People's Assessors Participating in a Seven-Member Collegiate Bench Trial of Civil Public-Interest Litigation on Marine Environment.

Selected case: People's Assessors Participating in a Seven-Member Collegiate Bench Trial of Civil Public-Interest Litigation on Marine Environment

I. Basic Facts of the Case

On August 23, 2016, Li XX, the captain of a cargo ship, approached Cui XX, an intermediary engaged in waste acquisition, and the parties agreed to drive the ship to a terminal to load and then carry waste to the sea for dumping, with each ton settled at RMB 65. Li XX hired Gan XX to work on the ship. On the same day, the ship arrived at the terminal designated by Wen XX, the waste source provider, and loaded 659.3 tons of waste, for which Cui XX paid RMB 35,000 to Li XX. On the following day, while driving the ship, Li XX instructed Gan XX to operate an excavator to dump most of the waste on the ship into the sea, which totaled 563.99 tons. On August 25, the ship and persons on the ship were seized by the customs anti-smuggling division. Upon assessment, the dumping incident caused such consequences as damage to marine environmental capacity, pollution of seawater quality, and death of marine life. Subsequently, the Ecology and Environment Bureau of Zhuhai filed a public-interest lawsuit with Guangzhou Maritime Court, requesting that Wen XX, Cui XX, Li XX, Gan XX and the owner of the ship involved in the case be ordered to jointly and severally compensate for the costs of remediation, removal and disposal of waste, and other losses, totaling RMB 2,049,000, and to make an apology. The People's Procuratorate of Zhuhai supported the plaintiff in filing the lawsuit. Guangzhou Maritime Court randomly selected four people's assessors from the list of people's assessors with marine-related expertise and formed a seven-member collegial bench with three judges, with its President acting as the presiding judge. In the first instance, it was ruled that the defendants Wen XX, Cui XX and Li XX compensate costs of environmental remediation and other losses aggregating RMB 2,049,000, and Gan XX be jointly and severally liable to the extent of 85.54% of the compensation amount, and they jointly make an apology to the public. The defendants Wen XX and Gan XX were not satisfied with the judgment and filed an appeal. Guangdong High People's Court rejected the appeal in the second instance and upheld the original judgment.

II. Role of People’s Assessors Participation in Trial

This case was civil public-interest litigation on the marine environment caused by the tortfeasors dumping waste into the sea. The four people's assessors, from marine-related industries and enthusiastic about the public-interest marine environment affairs, played an active role in the case trials. First, they carefully ascertained the facts. The people's assessors conducted investigations centered on the facts in dispute and expressed their opinions on each specific factual finding based on the list of fact issues, such as whether the garbage dumping incident caused damage to the marine environment, whether the five defendants jointly implemented the act of polluting the environment, and the scope of environmental damage inflicted, resulting in the transcript of the collegial bench running to 36 pages. Second, they further proposed scientific and reasonable opinions on ecological remediation. When deliberating the case, the people's assessors made analyses by applying their expertise and proposed that the waste dumped into the sea had been extremely dispersed by the movement of ocean currents, making it objectively difficult to eliminate the impact by salvaging, collecting, removing, etc.; therefore, if the defendants were ordered to restore the marine environment when they expressed their inability to do so, it was rather difficult to get the damaged marine environment restored in time, and was not conducive to protecting the public interest. This opinion was accepted by the collegial bench, which decided to support the plaintiff's request for an alternative environmental remediation approach, in which the final compensation amount was determined by establishing an equivalence between environmental damage and the discounted amount of services for restoring the ecological environment. Hence, the defendants were ordered to compensate for the cost of ecological remediation.

III. Key Significance

Caring about the ocean, understanding the ocean, planning ocean governance, and establishing the concept of an ocean community with a common future is the path China must take to become a maritime power. In this case, the judges conscientiously performed their duties to provide guidance and suggestions as to the case trial, and meticulously worked out a list of fact issues to ensure that the four people's assessors gave full play to their professional role in the fact-finding of marine environmental damage. This highlighted the principle of public participation in environmental justice. The four people's assessors fulfilled their duties earnestly, which increased the acceptability of the decision. In addition, the live broadcast of the whole hearing process on the Internet demonstrated the function of the people's justice in dispute resolution. The trial of the case strongly protected the marine ecological environment in the waters of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, further showed the benefits of regulation, education and guidance of marine environmental justice, implemented the principle of public participation in environmental justice, and raised the public awareness of the protection of and the rule of law in the marine environment.