Abstract: The“Case of Dissuading a Smoker in Elevator”happened in Zhengzhou City，Henan Province has come under intense social concern from the very beginning. The different judgments of the Court of First Instance and the Court of Second Instance were made out of considerations of different effects，which have triggered a renewed discussion on the relationship between legal and social effects. The Court of First Instance applied the principle of fair liability in its judgment and ordered Yang Huan，the person who dissuades the smoker，to compensate the family of the deceased；its main concern is the social effect of the case，with the intention of calming and resolving the dispute；the Court of Second Instance denied the rationality of applying the principle of fair liability by the Court of First Instance from the perspective of legal causality，commuted and rejected all the claims of the appellant. There are three kinds of thoughts over the relationship between legal effect and social effect：the“instrument theory”，the“separation theory”and the “unification theory”. The“unification theory”is the most reasonable，which manifests the legal effect by correctly applying the law to achieve the unification of judicial verdict’s certainty and correctness. Among the two，correctness ensures that the verdict conforms to social justice and realizes the social effect of the verdict，which further guarantees the unification of the verdict’s legal effect and social effect.

Key words: judicial adjudication, legal effect, social effect, Court of First Instance, Court of Second Instance, civil judicature