Public interest damages
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This paper argues that punitive, nominal, contemptuous, vindicatory, and disgorgement damages (commonly referred to as non-compensatory damages) can be collectively analysed as public interest damages because all these awards are justified by violations of public interests in addition to violations of the claimant's rights. To the extent they are awarded in the public interest, non-compensatory damages feature a distinctively public element in private law. In contrast to compensatory damages, public interest damages are justified by ‘non-correlative wrongdoing’, ie infringements of interests which are valuable to the community rather than to the claimant. This helps us to understand how public interest damages differ from traditional damages awards and why public interest damages should be treated as an exceptional remedy. In support of these claims, the paper offers an original analytic framework of reasons that justify damages awards.
Source: Legal Studies
DOI: 10.1017/lst.2020.2
Author: Václav Janeček
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3044796780