Research On The Base Of Punitive Damages

In the "law of the Peoples Republic of China on the protection of consumer rights and interests", article 49 ruled that, business operators engaged in fraudulent activities in supplying commodities or services shall, on the demand of the consumers, increase the compensations for victims' losses; The increased amount of the compensations shall be two times the costs that the consumers paid for the commodities purchased or services received. This article expressly to introduce punitive damages with the purpose of punishment and deterrence, and compensation for victims exceeds the amount of actual damages. This rule has become an important means of protecting the interests of consumers.When introduce punitive damage in Chinese law, according to the background of economic development, it can be analyzed that the aim of it focus on the law enforcement. It is hoped to encourage people to fight with the illegal activities, and the compensation amount rated the same as the price of commodities or services, thus became so-called double compensation system. But with the development of economic, simple rules cannot solve the complex legal issues. For example, business operator's activities of partial false pretence produce new problems to judges in their legal application, which greatly affected the seriousness of justice, and has bad influence on promoting consumer unswervingly safeguard their legal rights, and not good at the realization of the purpose of punitive damages.This paper begins with introducing the legislation background, and the aim of introducing punitive damage of the Anglo-American system is to severely punish activities with violation of consumers' legal rights. But punitive damages in Chinese law are different with the punitive damages set for tortuous activities in Anglo-American system, so we cannot blindly copy the special rules in Anglo-American system. Then this paper further discusses the legal nature of punitive damages in Chinese law is the breach of contract, next the author sort out the fraud cases, and find out the common sense and controversial issues from court sentences. Since the paper above already confirmed that the basis of punitive damages is the breach of contract, the author work over on how to apply earnest money under the situation of incomplete to perform the contract, from this to ensure the base of punitive damages to partial fraud activities. After that, this paper learned from the law interpretation of Supreme People's Court and "BMW auto defect case" from the United States, to find out the way to determine the base of punitive damages. Through the analysis of the above cases and theories, and finally established the standards of partial fraud activities, and determine punitive compensation base. From above analyst of theories and practice, we can get the conclusion of this paper. And the author hopes to put more attention on partial fraud activities, it is best to identify the definition of "partial fraud activities", and make out specific rules, to make the law contact with the practice more closely, and to protect consumers' rights better.