Who’s Afraid of Punitive Damages?

A collection of essays under the titled Who’s Afraid of Punitive Damages? has recently been published by Mohr Siebeck, edited by Tobias Lutzi (University of Augsburg). The book can be freely accessed here.

It is the first of two volumes resulting from the Project Zeitenwende beim Strafschadensersatz? / A Turning Point for Punitive Damages?, aimed to bring together international developments in case law and empirical research on punitive damages with recent developments in German and European law. Specifically, it seeks to answer the question of whether and to what extent the complete refusal of the German courts to recognize and enforce foreign punitive damage awards is still tenable today.

The book features several texts on particular aspects of punitive damages: by Lukas Rademacher (Compensation, Punishment, and the Idea of Private Law), Jan Lüttringhaus (Punitive Damages and Insurance), Catherine M. Sharkey (Who’s Afraid of Punitive Damages for Products Liability Cases?), and Marko Jovanović (Punitive Damages, Public Policy, and the Hague Judgments Convention).

Also included are six texts on recent developments in individual countries regarding recognition and enforcement of punitive damages, by Johannes Ungerer, André Janssen, Béligh Elbalti, Caterina Benini, Marta Requejo Isidro and Min Kyung Kim).

Those strings are pulled together by a comparative introduction by the editor, that identifies some overarching trends.