The Study Of The Punitive Damages System In Protection Of The Consumer Rights And Interests

Punitive damages system has played an important role in protecting consumers’rights and interests, maintaining the order of market economy in more than200years.Clause49of Consumer Protection Act of our country formulated "the double indemnity"that created a precedent of punitive damages in our country. But with the deepening ofreform and open in China and the development of market economy, Punitive damagessystem is more powerless in protecting the consumers’ rights and interests，all kinds oftorts often appear which damage consumer’s rights and interests. So,ConsumerProtection Act that came into effect in2014revised the punitive compensation system.With the background of the Consumer Protection Act takes effect, what kind ofproblems that exist in punitive damages in the field of protecting consumer’s rights inour country exactly, and how to solve that is the purpose of this research.The major content of this paper is divided into five parts.The first part discusses the basic theory of punitive damages. In order to improvethe punitive damages mechanism of our nation, we must first of all get an idea of thebasic theory. This part focuses on the concept, origin and its development, nature andfunctions of the punitive damages.The second part takes more emphasis on the necessity and feasibility of introducingthe system of punitive damages into consumer rights protection. For the necessity ofdeveloping punitive damages in China, three aspects are taken into consideration: theneed for protecting consumers, the need for getting rid of illegal sales, and the need forbalancing and maintenance consumers’ rights. While, this part also explores thefeasibility of introducing punitive damages in two ways: the inner logic of the theoryand the view of Law and Economics.The third part is the extraterritorial investigation about consumer protection in thearea of punitive damages. This party is mainly conducted under the main different lawsystems of the world, namely common law system and civil law system. I choose thevalues, subjective fault, the base with three elements to be resolved in multiples as theresearch directions of punitive damages regime abroad.The fourth part discusses the protection of consumer interests in the status quo ofChina’s punitive damages system. This section first summarizes the status quo ofChina’s interest in protecting consumers in the legislative system of punitive damages from the scope of the subject, subjective fault and other aspects. Then, I focus on theanalysis of discovering the disadvantages of consumer protection in our country.The fifth part is the recommendations about how to improve the system of punitivedamages in consumer protection laws. The section is on the basis of the previousfour-part discussion, I think these proposals set out below are essential for betterdevelopment of the theory: setting up a more clear concept of consumer, limiting thescope of expanding the person’s subjective fault, adopting the doctrine of presumptionas the unique principle of attribution and establish a reasonable and scientific solution tocalculating the amount of compensation.