The concept of punitive damages

Abstract

In the field of liability, continental legal systems have evolved from the acknowledgement of the need to provide damages to the victim of a not lawful action toward the idea of adjudicating moral damages. However, this instance is defined within a precise framework: to leave the victim (to the extent it may be possible under the context of the kind of harm) in the original state in which the victim  was before the damage,  and  at the  same  time,  avoiding  unlawful  enrichment as a consequence of the judgment in favor of the plaintiff. On the contrary, in the Anglo-Saxon system, as it will be proved in this article, the adjudication of liability has additional objectives that allow the judge to furnish damages almost without limit.

In a society like the Colombian one, in which the weaker citizens are under state of disadvantage before the stronger ones and the State, the law starts to questioning itself to see if it is worthy to pass over the liability traditional rules and to start to use the award of a punitive mechanism with the goal of avoiding and arbitrariness and abuse. In this context, this article seeks to define and explain the concept of punitive damages; to study its applicability in other legal systems and then to study and analyse the legal pertinence of this institution.