17 Facts About Punitive damages

Punitive damages are often awarded if compensatory damages are deemed an inadequate remedy.

Punitive damages are most important for violations of the law that are hard to detect.

For example, punitive damages awarded to one party in a US case would be difficult to get recognition for in a European court in which punitive damages are most likely to be considered to violate ordre public.

The New South Wales Court of Appeal held that punitive damages are not available both for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.

Spigelman CJ concurred, although he emphasized that the contractual character of the fiduciary relationship in question, and refrained from deciding on whether punitive damages would be available in respect of equitable wrongs more analogous to torts.

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In England and Wales, exemplary damages are limited to cases in which at least one of the circumstances set out by Lord Devlin in the leading case of Rookes v Barnard has been met:.

Exemplary Punitive damages go beyond the philosophical aims of a contractual remedy and are not available as Punitive damages for breach of contract.

German courts do not award punitive damages and consider foreign punitive damages unenforceable to the extent that the payment would exceed the damages plus an allowance for reasonable defence costs big enough so that the plaintiff would get a full reimbursement of its loss but not more.

In Paper Reclaim Ltd v Aotearoa International it was held that exemplary Punitive damages are not to be awarded in actions for breach of contract but the court left open the possibility that exemplary Punitive damages might be available where the breach of contract is a tort.

In very few industries, punitive damages could be awarded in either contractual or tort case, except a tort relevant to product defraud or defect.

Punitive damages are a settled principle of common law in the United States.

Punitive damages are entirely unavailable under any circumstances in a few jurisdictions, including Nebraska, Puerto Rico, and Washington.

General rule is that punitive damages cannot be awarded for breach of contract, but if an independent tort is committed in a contractual setting, punitive damages can be awarded for the tort.

Punitive damages are a focal point of the tort reform debate in the United States, where numerous highly publicized multimillion-dollar verdicts have led to a fairly common perception that punitive damage awards tend to be excessive.

However, statistical studies by law professors and the Department of Justice have found that punitive damages are only awarded in two percent of civil cases which go to trial, and that the median punitive damage award is between $38,000 and $50,000.

The jury decided on $200,000 in compensatory Punitive damages, but attributed 20 percent of the fault to Liebeck, reducing her compensation to $160,000.

The court held that punitive damages must be reasonable, as determined by the degree of reprehensibility of the conduct that caused the plaintiff's injury, the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages, and any comparable criminal or civil penalties applicable to the conduct.