Judicial Standards for Apparent Agency Defense in PRC Corporate Litigation
PRC courts invalidate apparent agency defenses when counterparties fail to inspect corporate articles of association or accept non-corporate payment account routing.
Civil Procedure Burden of Proof
Meaning
Legal rules under the PRC Civil Procedure Law dictate which party must produce evidence to support a factual claim. The civil procedure burden of proof requires the party asserting a fact to substantiate it, failing which that party receives an adverse judgment. This responsibility remains with the claimant throughout the factual dispute and applies to both domestic and foreign litigants.
Failure to meet this requirement results in the dismissal of the lawsuit or the rejection of the specific claim.
Allocation Standard
Statutory distribution of the evidentiary task follows the principle that the claimant bears the risk of unproven allegations. When a foreign investor files a claim in a Chinese tribunal, the civil procedure burden of proof dictates that the plaintiff must substantiate every element of the cause of action. The Supreme People’s Court determines these distributions to ensure procedural fairness.
Evidentiary Threshold
Production of evidence must satisfy the high degree of probability standard to persuade the judge. Fact-finders evaluate the submissions according to their credibility and relevance to the dispute. This level of proof requires that the asserted fact is highly likely to be true.
Judicial Exception
Special rules shift the risk to the defendant in specific categories of disputes such as environmental pollution or product liability. Courts demand that the manufacturer or polluter disprove the causal link or the existence of a defect. This legal structure protects weaker parties in asymmetric transactions.