A Research On Punitive Damages In Products Liability

Punitive damages are very common in ancient laws, but the contemporarypunitive damages are only found in Anglo-American laws. The Civiltradition adheres to compensative notion, as a result of that punitivedamages are rejected. China has imported the notion of punitive damagesnot long before, and hasn’t very familiar with it yet. The thesis is tryto illustrate the history of punitive damages and give a thorough pictureof their details. Comparing between China and America, with the historyfoundation as basis, we will try to find how should the system work inproduct liability and predict the trends of punitive damages in China.This article is divided into five chapters. Chapter One mainlyillustrate the history of punitive damages and the development inAnglo-American laws. In the history section the many details of punitivedamages in ancient laws such as The Babylonian Hammurabi Code and The HinduCode of Manu will be given, so as to find the common characters in ancientlaws. Then the article gives a brief overview on the cases giving theverdict of punitive damages in English laws and the restrictions on itsapplication. Punitve damages in American laws undergo a change fromindividual and corporation to consumer protection and products liability.This part tries to find the consistency and disparate.Chapter two focus on the query of punitive damages. This part givessome details about the theoretically and empirical debate in academic circles, the motions of government, the tort reform both at federal andstate level, the dispute of constitutionality of such awards and therecent cases decided by the United States Supreme Court.Chapter three gives an introduction to the problems on the punitivedamages in products liability in China. This part first gives an accountof the development of punitive damages in China and the Statutes thatprovide punitive damages. Then basing on the Article47of the Tort Lawof P.R.C, which provides punitive damages in product liability, it givessome detail research on the scope of products, the kinds of defects andhow to judge them, the requirements of intention and the scope of damage.Chapter four gives an preliminary analysis of the shortage ofpunitive damages in Chinese legal system and also raises some suggestionson how to improve it. There are some shortcomes on how to calculate theamount of punitive damages, the function and the scope of punitive damages.There are also improvements to avoid these weaknesses，such as basing onthe compensatory damages, expanding the scope of punitive damages,coordinating the application of the statutes and learning the example ofAmerican Law.Chapter five comes to a conclusion: Punitive damages are deeply rootedin history and play a good function in social life. But such awards havesome inherent defects, which need some reform and changes. The punitivedamages in products liability in China are progressive, but still at thebeginning level. The multiple damages are not the real contemporarypunitive damages, which the latter is unpredictable and thus more powerfulto deter and punish the offender. But the law system in China has alreadymade room for further improving.