Punitive Damages. On Applicable, In Our News Infringement

With the social and economic development of our society, the gradual advancement in citizens' awareness of their civil rights, as well as the protection of these rights, many welcome changes have occurred in our country's journalism. However, it also faces a lot of problems. The media-related tort is one of them. Under the present judicial system, media-related torts appear constantly, which expose the conflicts between press freedom and news supervision, between individual privacy and the right to know, and between the individual interests and the public interests.Punitive damages, which mean such part of damages paid to the aggrieved party above its actual loss, are the counterpart of compensatory damages. In order to improve the existing system of media-related tort liability, this paper makes an analysis of and research on relevant system, theory, and practice of punitive damages, and on that basis makes a preliminary study on how to build a perfect punitive damages system in the field of media-related tort liability in China. This thesis is composed of five chapters except for the foreword and the conclusion.The first part of this paper starts with some issues about fundamental theories such as the conception, the characteristics and so on. This is the first crucial step in the analysis and judgment of media-related torts. This part also analyzes the existing system of media-related tort liability, points out the problems of this system and also proposes measures to improve it.The second part of this paper defines punitive damages, explains and analyzes its nature, describes the origin of punitive damages, and the paper focuses on its functions:containment, punishment and deterrence.The third part of this paper describes our country's legislation on the status of punitive damages, as well as the application and the reform of punitive damages in western countries. Through the vertical and horizontal two-way comparison, author wants to clarify the legitimacy of building punitive damages system in the field of media-related tort liability in China.The fourth part of this paper compares punitive damages with some similar concepts, such as compensatory damages. Considering that the rationality of the system in the field of civil law relies in the nature of punitive damages, through the analysis on the different theories in the law circle, that is to say, "the theory of public law damages" and "the theory of private law damages", the author points out that punitive damages are the damages with the characteristics of public law and private law, which means that the nature of punitive damages is in the field of public law although its form shows the characteristics of private law. Through the analysis in the fields of application conditions and amount limitation, the author points out that punitive damages should be applied to all the torts with egregious wrong while the amount should be limited in some degrees.The fifth part of this paper discusses the relationship between the press freedom and judicial involvement. The author wants to keep the balance between them by discussing the nature of the media-related tort.