Research On Punitive Damages System In Consumption Area

With the social economic improvement of living standards, consumer has increasing quality requirements for the products. However, currently, there are many prominent phenomenon and cases that against the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. From the recent case of "tonyred" event, "Sanlu powdered milk" incident,"car recall" events in 2010's,such frequent food issue and product safety incident has aroused public widely concern.This article will focus on how to create an effective system of punitive damages, in order to improve increasingly worsen status quo in our domestic market.This paper aims to discuss the limitations of punitive damages in consumption area and gives some suggestion for its improvement via referencing advanced legislative and judicial experience compare to our existing legislation and judicial status. Through the improvement of punitive damages in the consumer area, not only the legitimate interests of consumer can be effectively protected but also the enterprises will adhere to the be honest and legitimate business, in addition it could also actively prevent potential punitive damages and avoid negative attitude.This paper will describe by using comparative method, economic analysis method and legal hermeneutics methods. Besides the introduction and conclusion, the main part of this article is divided into four parts, the first part:state the necessary of setting up punitive damages by analyzing some cases in consumption area. Second part:summarize the basic theory of punitive damages and analyze it by view of legal liability.The third part:describes the system of punitive damages applies in the consumer area, also discusses the foreign product liability legislation in the application of punitive damages issue, and comment on the current punitive damages situation. Fourth part, discusses the necessity and feasibility of the punitive damages system applied in the legislative consumption area. I will give some preliminary idea on how to improve our system of punitive damages.