Research on liability allocation of personal injury accidents of university students during internships

Abstract

Personal injury incidents involving university students during internships occur with notable frequency, and the issue of liability allocation has long posed significant challenges for judicial practice and educational administration. The legal relationship inherent in internships features composite attributes encompassing both educational administration and quasi-employment relations. Current employment-related legal frameworks exclude interns from the scope of formal employment relations, thereby depriving them of the protection afforded by work-related injury insurance. Meanwhile, within the tort law framework, there exist ambiguities in defining the obligation of safety guarantee, obstacles to identifying the fault of all parties, and considerable disagreements over the choice of liability forms, resulting in drastically inconsistent judicial outcomes. Starting from the composite nature of internship legal relations, this paper systematically demonstrates the dual safety guarantee obligations borne by universities and internship employers for the personal safety of interns, along with their underlying theoretical frameworks. On this basis, adopting fault liability as the imputation principle, this study constructs a categorized system of liability allocation rules by distinguishing multiple scenarios: sole fault of universities, sole fault of internship employers, joint fault, third-party tort, and personal fault of students. In response to the practical dilemma of insufficient institutional supply, this paper proposes systematic improvement approaches: gradually expanding the coverage of work-related injury insurance, establishing a mandatory internship liability insurance system, setting categorized standards for safety guarantee obligations, optimizing the allocation of burden of proof, and developing diversified conflict resolution mechanisms. These proposals aim to provide theoretical support and institutional solutions for the proper handling of internship injury incidents.