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In Australia, punitive damages are not available for breach of contract, [5] but are possible for tort cases.. The law is less settled regarding equitable wrongs. In Harris v Digital Pulse Pty Ltd, [6] the defendant employees knowingly breached contractual and fiduciary duties to their employer by diverting business to themselves and misusing its confidential information.
To the extent Australia's system retains commonalities with English law, UK jurisprudence retains value as providing guidance to Australian courts. One key tension in Australia is a need for defamation law to strike an appropriate balance between the protection of an individual's reputation and values relating to free speech; as well as ...
An example is when a tortfeasor offers to sell a property to someone below market value knowing they were in the final stages of a sale with a third party pending the upcoming settlement date to formalize the sale writing. Such conduct is termed "tortious interference with a business expectancy". [2]
Most States have effected statutes relating to the sale of goods, such as the Sale of Goods Act 1896, (Qld) [191] which imply conditions and warranties in relation to fitness and merchantability. [192] However, in many instances such implied terms can be displaced by the contrary intention appearing in the contract between the parties.
The punitive damages commonly occurred in the civil action in which there does not exist a criminal sanction. [15] The jury or judge can make a decision to this damages that will impact more to a richer person that may pay more to encounter punitive damage since this damages are not hooked by the law. [15]
Penal damages are liquidated damages which exceed reasonable compensatory damages, making them invalid under common law.While liquidated damage clauses set a pre-agreed value on the expected loss to one party if the other party were to breach the contract, penal damages go further and seek to penalise the breaching party beyond the reasonable losses from the breach. [1]
Similar to the U.S., the courts in the United Kingdom tend to award monetary compensatory damages in tort cases. However, punitive damages are not applicable in the legal systems of the U.K. and Japan or the contractual cases in Australia and occupy a limited but expanding scope in the People's Republic of China.
At common law, a claimant's rights were limited to an award of damages. Later, the court of equity developed the remedy of specific performance instead, should damages prove inadequate. Specific performance is often guaranteed through the remedy of a right of possession, giving the plaintiff the right to take possession of the property in dispute.