Controversial Issues: Punitive Damages - Essay Example

Punitive damages promote justice in society using assisting companies in making safe products for customers and establishing a punishment function and a compensatory function.

There are three fundamental ways in which punitive damages promote justice. Firstly, punitive damages discourage an individual, agency, or company from cutting the corners or displaying gross negligence. Punitive damages provide the concerned parties with adequate incentives that they may utilize to produce such goods and services that are safe for their clients. When the vendors know that there is a possibility of the implication of large monetary penalties against the production of defective goods and services, they tend to improve the quality of their work and thus, promote public safety.

Secondly, punitive damages encapsulate a very important punishment function. Punitive damages tend to hold individuals, agencies, or companies accountable for their acts when they cause harm to individuals in society either by gross negligence or intentionally. Punishment is essential to forbid people from committing the same crime in the future. Where there is accountability, there is responsibility and peace. Punitive damages impose larger awards upon the guilty to make them take the charge seriously and amend their ways accordingly. Thirdly, punitive damages assume a compensatory function. They play a big role in compensating for intangible harms.

Punitive damages are estimated to provide the incentives that are required to commence the civil suits that are desirable for society. In circumstances when compensatory damages are not enough a reward for the promotion of commencement of legal action by the sufferer, and yet there is a great need of admonishing the behavior of the defendant, incentives do the job well. Punitive damages serve the purpose of becoming the source of the required incentive for the initiation of the action. Justice is thus, indirectly promoted as the people working against the public good are affected.

Punitive damages not only encourage civil suits, but also promote socially desirable safety levels, and thus promote justice. This claim is grounded in the perception that levels of safety are not adequately generated by basing the safety decisions’ cost-benefit analysis on the price needed to compensate the sufferer. Payment of punitive damages and the costs associated with the compensation of the sufferer gives rise to a cost-benefit analysis that is conducive to the generation of adequate levels of safety for the sufferer. Quite often, it so happens that the benefit given to the defendant as a result of the loss-causing incident does not weigh equal to the harm that the plaintiff has caused. Therefore, if the increase in the levels of safety has to be the reference for the establishment of justice, punitive damages play a big role in promoting justice in society.

Opponents of punitive damages say that punitive damages should be terminated because they are too large for companies to bear particularly in the contemporary age of financial crisis. This is not a valid argument against punitive damages because if the amount of punishment is belittled, individuals, agencies, and companies who are charged with the damages would not take the charges seriously and would continue with their unethical practices considering the charges, a necessary cost of running the business. Larger awards convince people to reconsider their practices for good to avoid the charges in the future.

Punitive damages have frequently been condemned by critics who consider that the amounts charged far exceed the reasonable limit, yet the proponents of punitive damages consider them necessary for an increase in safety levels. Despite all the controversies that surround this subject, punitive damages promote justice and peace in society. They are one of the most important reasons for the promotion of civil suits. They force companies to make safer products and contain both punishment and compensatory functions. Punitive damages take the people who work against the public good for personal gains to charge, and thus promote justice. Read More