The Study On The Punitive Damages From The Perspective Of Consumer Protection

Punitive Damages are a civil compensation system which exceeds the actual damaged value. As a special civil liability different from damage compensation, Punitive damages are drawing more and more attention from the legislators because of its unique function in the legal evolution and social development, and have a vigorous development in the field of consumer protection in many countries and regions, including America and Britain which are the birthplace of punitive damages and Chinese mainland and Taiwan of Civil Law. In 1993, The Consumer Protection Law firstly defines the provisions of the Double Compensation, which has been seen as creating a precedent for Punitive Damages. Subsequently the contract law, food safety law and tort law all have the Punitive Damages figure. The Punitive Damages have played an important role in the protection of legal rights of consumers and achievement of substantive justice. However, the above interpretations of the laws and related legislations still have many shortcomings and contradictions. System defects led to the ineffective of legal relief effect, preventive effect, and the implementation. This paper draws legislative experiences of punitive damages of the consumer protection law in the United States and Taiwan, and according own national conditions, improves the Punitive Damages in our consumer protection laws from the theoretical and legislative aspects.The essay makes a historical study to analyze the transformation of the system of Punitive Damages, a legal research to summarize and conclude the definition and connotation of this system, a comparison to identify the similarities and differences of the consumer protection law of the typical countries and regions between the two legislative, and try to find out the advanced experiences that we can learn, a juridical hermeneutics method to sort out the problems and defects of the Punitive Damages in our consumer protection law system, then find solutions.There are 4 chapters in the essay. The first chapter studies the general legal principles of the Punitive Damages in consumer protection law, focuses on the system in the history of evolution and the basic theories of Punitive Damages in the consumer protection laws. The second chapter compares the characteristics and summarized the legislative experience by introducing the Punitive Damages of consumer protection laws in other countries and regions. The third chapter is about the legal interpretation of the Punitive Damages of our Consumer Protection law, determining basic of consumer protection law based on Consumer Protection Law, Food Safety Laws and Tort Law, using the semantic interpretation, teleological interpretation, the system mandatory and other methods to analysis the defects. Based on the above analysis the fourth chapter proposes the legislative method.