The Research On The Defect And Perfection Of The Punitive Damages In Our Country

Punitive damages, as a good mechanism for social control by private power, is the compensation that the court order the defendant to pay to restrain their serious civil wrongs. In essence, punitive damages, which has nature of both the private and public law, is a kind of remedy which aims at protecting the rights of victims. It is essentially different from the systems of compensatory damages, mentel impaired compensation, fines and penalties. In ancient times, punitive damages flourished in civil law and common prosperity of law. In modern society, it made its unprecedented development in common law, but disappeared in the civil law. But with the development of society, in recent years, there is a trend of accepting punitive damages in the countries and regions of civil law, such as the Taiwan province of our country, having a positive impact on our country. Section 47 of Tort Liability Act uses the concept of "punitive damages", which lays the foundation and conditions for system being established and applied in China. However, it is so far inferior to common law countries in the scope of application, application conditions and the calculation of damages, even there is a gap compared to Taiwan. So in the severe case of today's product safety and environmental violations, it is necessary to improve the systems of punitive damages.In addition to the introduction and epilogue, the article is divides into three parts.The first part talks about the current Legislation of the system of punitive damages and analyzes the defect on basis of the domestic and international legislation of punitive damages of our country;The second part, with comparative method, discusses the different development of punitive damages on common law and civil law and summarize some aspects our country should learn.The third part discusses that we should note the problem of drawing on the experience of extra-territorial system of punitive damages and China should formulate Punitive Damages Law, and specific ways and means of proving system of punitive damages.