Research On Punitive Damages For Mass Tort

Because of the uncertainty of science and technology, large-scale repetitive of production of and natural feature of profit-driven about enterprise, modern society has become a high-risk place.The frequent occurrences of mass tort, not only does harm to the interests of the thousands of victims, but also to the interests of the whole society.As a "sword of Damocles" which hanging on the head of the enterprises,punitive damages can effectively curb the occurrences of mass torts.Also it can effectively compensate for the damage caused by the infringement, appease the victims, protect the moral standards of society.Punitive damages system has a long history,and grows in countries of case law like Britain and America. As a country belong to the civil law system, China is always cautious to the punitive damages. As so far,the article47of "Tort Liability Law",the article55of Law on Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers" and the article148of "Law on Food Safety" constitute the system of punitive damages of China.But our system of punitive damages can only use in a narrow scope, the punishment is often inadequate and have other issues, we need further improvementThe purpose of this paper is elaborating the legitimacy and rationality of punitive damages, analyzing the urgent need for using punitive damages in mass tort. By comparing the situation of punitive damages for mass tort in two law system, I intend to discuss the future of punitive damages in our country in order to improve the application of this system.This paper is divided into four parts, the first part by exploring the meaning and nature of mass tort, so as to define the scope of punitive damages; the second part focuses on the urgency and necessity of punitive damages for mass tort; the third part by comparing the situation of four country in two legal systems in order to discuss the prospects punitive damage for mass tort; section Ⅳ discusses the range of punitive damages for mass tort cases and the calculation of the compensation.