The Study of Enacting Punitive Damages to Civil Code Article 195-1

• Main Authors: HSIAO JU LING, 蕭如伶
• Other Authors: PAN WEI TA
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/61617950021900750096

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 103 === Punitive damages (or exemplary damages, as they are called in the United Kingdom) are damages that are awarded in excess of the plaintiff’s actual harm when compensatory damages are insufficient to deter wrongdoing. Punitive damages are awarded for two inter-related purposes: the first purpose is to punish the defendant for behavior that offends community values and is intentionally despicable, malicious, contemptible, or otherwise morally reprehensible. The second purpose is to protect the public by preventing the defendant from engaging in similar behavior in the future and by sending a message to deter others who might contemplate engaging in similar behavior. Recently, due to the excessive awards of punitive damages, American Supreme Court has begun examining the constitutionality of punitive damages. Some scholars suggest that punitive damages litigations should be limited to class action. Some states require the determination of awards of punitive damages to be made in a separate proceeding. Other states limit the award of punitive damages to the times the award of compensatory damages, or require part amount of punitive damage awards to be paid to the state fund or other organizations. In 1994, the Legislative Yuan enacted punitive damages to Consumer Protection Law Article 51. In accordance with this law, the required consumer may claim for punitive damages up to 3 times the amount of actual damages as a result of injures caused by willful misconduct of business operators and one time by negligence. The legislative purpose of Article 51 is to protect consumers and punish malicious corporations engaged in wrongdoing and defected products and deter other corporations which might engage in the same behavior in the future. So far, punitive damages are enacted only in special laws, such as Consumer Protection Law, Patent Law, and so on. Thus, the legislators suggest we enact punitive damages to Civil Code Article 195-1. The plaintiff may claim for punitive damages up to 3 times the amount of actual damages as a result of injures caused by the defendant’s intentionally malicious behavior. Different from Consumer Protection Law Article 51, Civil Code Article 195-1 constraints on the willful and bad faith behaviors, and negligence is not included. However, the Justice minister argued that punitive damages violates against the compensatory damages in our civil justice system for two reasons. The one is the excessive damages and the other is that the purposes of punishment and deterrence should be executed in the criminal system, not in the civil system. This thesis is aimed at enacting punitive damages to the Civil Code Article 195-1.