The judicial organs' unification of adjudication standards for the punitive damages system undoubtedly provides clear guidance for society and helps to form a positive atmosphere of supervision
How to define the compensation standard for knowingly buying fake goods and suing for compensation?
According to the "People's Court Daily" on March 3, the Supreme People's Court recently released four typical cases of punitive damages for food safety. In one case, the purchaser, Zhang, purchased 46 expired salted duck eggs twice in two days, settled in 46 transactions, and sued the supermarket for a total of 46,000 yuan in compensation according to the compensation standard of 1,000 yuan per transaction.
The court finally ruled that the supermarket should refund Zhang 101 of the purchase price of 46 salted duck eggs2 yuan, and the compensation is 1012 yuan according to ten times the purchase price. In other words, 46 orders are treated as one transaction, and the compensation standard of "refund one and pay ten" applies.
In this case, Zhang's behavior is a typical example of knowingly buying fakes. He deliberately split the order and made several small payments, apparently because he was familiar with the compensation provisions of the Food Safety Law - compensation of less than 1,000 yuan will be compensated as 1,000 yuan. During the same period, Zhang was also involved in a number of similar anti-counterfeiting cases, which are obviously different from the consumption habits of ordinary consumers.
The original intention of the punitive damages system is to make illegal producers and operators bear multiple times the compensation, so as to punish and have a deterrent and warning effect on potential violators. Since 1993, when the Consumer Rights Protection** first included a punitive damages clause, the Food Safety Law also added a "ten-fold compensation" clause in 2009. Since then, the phenomenon of knowing and buying counterfeits has gradually increased, showing the characteristics of professionalism and specialization, and some people have even used this system to pursue improper interests, resulting in controversy over the system. Among them, some opponents argue that the motives of the knowingly counterfeit buyer are not pure, and should not be regarded as a consumer, and the punitive damages clause cannot be applied.
In judicial practice, there have also been two extremes in the attitude towards knowing and buying fakes. One is to fully support the behavior of knowing and buying fakes, so that some producers and operators are "too small to take big responsibility"; The other is that it does not support the purchase of counterfeit goods at all, resulting in illegal producers and operators evading punitive damages. Both practices are contrary to the principle of "proportionality of the penalty". In particular, the latter's "beating to death" for knowing and buying fakes is not conducive to stimulating the public's enthusiasm for food safety supervision.
Therefore, in order for punitive damages to play their due role, it is key to clarify the applicable standards. This time, the Supreme People's Court proposed that whether or not to support the purchaser's punitive damages claim should be judged by using whether it exceeds the needs of daily consumption as the judgment criterion, which has strong practical guiding significance. In the Salted Duck Eggs case, the court held that Zhang's purchase of salted duck eggs was still within the scope of daily consumption, and the supermarket did sell expired food, so it should be regarded as a transaction and punitive damages clauses should apply.
Of course, how to define the "scope of reasonable living consumption" still needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis. But in general, the purchaser's claim for punitive damages on the grounds that the food does not meet the standards is an exercise of the right granted by law and should be supported. But at the same time, the principle of good faith should also be followed.
The judicial organs' unification of adjudication standards for the punitive damages system undoubtedly provides clear guidance for society and helps to form a positive atmosphere of supervisionHowever, in order to truly ensure food safety, the relevant departments also need to strengthen supervision and smooth the channels for consumer complaints, so as to effectively safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. (Zhengguan commentator Zhou Yeqi).
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Co-ordinator: Chen Ruosong.
Editor: Ren Sining.