Punitive damages is just a way to make people/businesses pay
for their gross negligence beyond just paying off a set bill for injuries and
damage they caused. It is an extra way to say you can't get away with your
actions and continue them without paying the price.
"The deterrence justification for punitive damages is
motivated by two objectives: (1) to deter the specific defendant in the case
from repeating or continuing his, her, or its offensive behavior and (2) to
deter, generally, other potential parties from committing similar
offenses."
It is not really effective because there is no guarantee the
person/ business will listen. For instance, ask Mr. R. about the seat accident
his father was in. The store just picked the seat up and kept it out for others
to use.... Or you can just look at tobacco companies and all the cases they had
against them, they are still selling cigarettes. Then there is the fact that some punitive
damage amounts are very extreme. This will encourage suing. If someone sees
that someone else received money for something they have experienced then they
will sue to. An example of this is the case Johnson v. Carmona. For one word
(but offensive word) she received $30,000 in punitive damages. That word is
tossed around all the time, sometimes kindly but others offensively, just like
many other offensive terms. If people knew they can get money by videotaping
the incident, there will be more trials and more people provoking and recording
someone using offensive terms towards them. When the article was on my screen
someone saw it and was joking around about how they can sue because they were
called that before. That was just a joke but there are people who would just
sue for the money.
