The Punitive Damages System Less Than Perfect

Punitive damages system was a special private relief mechanism of common law, which aims to punish and deter malice people, and through lifting a suit by victim to protect public interests and maintain social order. Although it was subjected to many criticizes from born, It was getting a wide development in America and prone to mature as the years passed. Now it has become the cornerstone of tort law system of common law, and given an important influence to the legislation and judicial practice of civil law. Being incarcerated in the traditional theory of compensates damages and the disadvantage of applying the punitive damages, the common law reacted so negatively to punitive damages in the early time. But by the communicating and integrating of world economy and culture gradually, the common law began to recognize punitive damages system within a limit in judicial practice, even few countries applied the articles of punitive damages in national special law. Our country had established the punitive damages article firstly in"Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests"in 1993, and prescribed the similar punitive damages article in other special law after then. Although the legislation of punitive damages has achieved a good effect in protecting people's right, punishing the illegal operators, maintaining the social order and purifying commercial morals, Its system construction isn't perfect and has many defects, such as the compensation standard isn't flexible and missing specifications for make a decision, many problems has arisen in real life finally. During the process of ratifying"Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests"of our country, many scholars appealed to perfect the article of punitive damages, aggravate punishment, and perform functions of punishing and deterring illegal actions and encouraging private enforcement. Given this background, this paper bases on the survey of punitive damages system's function, make the functional effect as standard to inspect present situation of our country's punitive damages, then combines the typical problems appeared in practice to analyze and introspect the defects of punitive damages deeply, finally suggest taking"function realization"as the basis and persisting the principle of"strengthening inner construction and expanding the application fields of punitive damages",then adopting foreign experiences of legislation and judicial practice to commute the punitive damages system of our country gradually.The paper can be divided into three parts: The Part I, Analysis on the functions of punitive damages. By dating back to the development course of punitive damages system , the author investigates the evolution tracks of its functions and analysis the relations of punitive damages'functions concretely with the theory of function.Part II, Survey the legislation and judicial practice of our county's punitive damages system. Based on the detailed examination of existing provisions, the author combines the main issues arisen in practice and takes its function effect as the basis to introspect the disadvantages of punitive damages deeply from the inner and outsider aspects and make prepare for the part III.Part III, Improving punitive damages system of our country. Considered that the punitive damages system of our country has many defects, the author suggests that persisting the principle of"strengthening inner construction and expanding the application fields of punitive damages", improving the punitive damages by defining the constitution item of punitive damages responsibility clearly, establishing the specifications for make a decision and so on, then extending the range of applying punitive damages to the field of environment torts and intellection right protection, and looking for the best application standard in order to benefit for improving punitive damages system of our country.