The Restrictive Application of the Good Samaritan Law in the Chinese Civil Code: An Interpretative Perspective

Article 184 of the current Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China establishes the “Good Samaritan Law.” Through literal interpretation, this provision grants emergency rescuers the status of “bearing no civil liability,” aiming to encourage courageous acts of public service, eliminate rescuers’ concerns, and promote positive social energy. However, the wording of this rule is overly abstract and generalized. Consequently, disputes regarding the determination of its constitutive requirements and the scope of liability exemption persist in both theory and practice, leading to the issue of “different judgments for similar cases” in judicial application. To mitigate the negative effects brought about by the legislative vagueness of Article 184, this paper employs a comprehensive set of research methods—normative, historical, comparative, and empirical—to conduct an interpretive study on how this provision should be applied. First, by examining legislative history and comparative law, this paper demonstrates the justification for a restrictive application of Article 184, pointing out that the legal effect of relative exemption for emergency rescue aligns with international trends in comparative law and the principle of fairness in civil law. Second, a restrictive interpretation is applied to the constitutive requirements: regarding “voluntariness,” it advocates for limiting the subjects to natural persons and excluding those with statutory or contractual duties; regarding “emergency,” it advocates for a combined subjective-objective standard and emphasizes the necessity of rescue intervention; regarding “rescue,” it advocates for limiting the object to personal rights and interests, excluding purely property interests, and emphasizes that rescue acts should possess a minimum level of rationality. Finally, it provides a restrictive interpretation of the liability exemption under Article 184, advocating for the scope of exemption to be limited to ordinary negligence while explicitly excluding intent and gross negligence. Furthermore, the principle of proportionality is introduced as a substantive standard for judging the legitimacy of rescue acts, and acts that seriously violate this principle are relegated to the system of negotiorum gestio for regulation. The research results indicate that through the restrictive interpretation of the constitutive requirements and liability exemption of Article 184, systematic conflicts can be resolved at the dogmatic level, achieving a dynamic balance between encouraging courageous acts and protecting the rights and interests of recipients.