Contracts/Punitive damages
Template:Unreferenced stub Template:Contract law Penal damages are best seen as quantitatively excessive liquidated damages and are invalid under the common law. While liquidated damages are a priori calculations of expectation loss under the contract, penal damages go further and seek to penalise a party in some way for breach of a clause above and beyond the loss suffered by the innocent party as a result of this breach. Many clauses which are found to be penal are expressed as liquidated damages clauses but are seen by courts as excessive and thus invalid.
The judicial approach to penal damages is conceptually important as it is one of the few examples of judicial paternalism in contract law. Even if two parties genuinely and without coercion wish to consent to a contract which includes a penal clause, they are unable to. So, for example, a person wishing to give up smoking cannot contract with a third party to be fined $100 each time they smoke as this figure does not represent the expectation loss of the contract.
As distinguished from other types of damages
Penal damages are to be distinguished from punitive damages, which are awarded in certain types of tort actions for actions which caused harm to the plaintiff. Penal damages are also different from treble damages, which are generally set by statute for certain violations of competition law and related laws.
Immunity from causing contractual damages is one of the contradictions of Equal justice in America! Recently, state judges in trial court and appellate court in California actually changed the terms of a contract and so doing denied the contracts terms to be enforced. While under our Constitution when judges impair the terms in a contract that impairment is VOID as the Constitution prohibits judges from doing just that. Our founders in the Federalist explained that any act contrary to the intent of the Constitution must be declared void by each and every reviewing court.
Yet judges are more interested in protecting corrupt judges than they are in enforcing the intent of the Constitution as presented to govt by the people. Keep in mind that while the people are the ultimate or highest authority, our courts simply don't respect that. Courts and judges place themselves above our laws and our Constitution by giving each other immunity. Yet immunity from the Constitution is granted to no man! The question is who shall enforce the intent of the people? At one time we could rely on the morality and honesty of those we placed in governmental posts. But those days are long gone in America! Courts, Congress and Executive put themselves above the people and we let them> What a pity!
