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| To compensate the defendant for mental distress | | To compensate the defendant for mental distress |
| ====[[Punitive damages]]==== | | ====[[Punitive damages]]==== |
| Much rarer, because these go ''beyond'' the philosophical aims of a contractual damages action. So rare, indeed, as to be unavailable at [[contract]], as Lord Atkinson put it, in the great case of {{casenote|Addis|Gramophone}}:
| | {{punitive damages capsule}} |
| :“In many other cases of [[breach of contract]] there may be circumstances of malice, [[fraud]], defamation, or violence, which would sustain an action of [[tort]] as an alternative remedy to an action for [[breach of contract]]. If one should select the former mode of redress, he may, no doubt, recover [[exemplary damages]], or what is sometimes styled vindictive damages; but if he should choose to seek redress in the form of an action for [[breach of contract]], he lets in all the consequences of that form of action: {{citer|Thorpe|Thorpe|1832|3B.&Ad.|580}}. One of these consequences is, I think, this: that he is to be paid adequate compensation in money for the loss of that which he would have received had his contract been kept, and no more.”
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| The Law Commission, considering the topic some ninety-odd years later, felt the same way: “we recommend that punitive damages should not be available unless the defendant has committed a [[tort]], an [[equitable wrong]], or a civil wrong that arises under a statute, and his conduct showed a ‘deliberate and outrageous disregard of the plaintiff’s rights’. '''We also recommend that [[punitive damages]] should never be available for [[breach of contract]].”<ref>[http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/04/LC247.pdf Law commissioon report on exemplary damages]</ref>
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| {{sa}} | | {{sa}} |
| *[http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/04/LC247.pdf Law commissioon report on exemplary damages] in 1997 | | *[http://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/04/LC247.pdf Law commissioon report on exemplary damages] in 1997 |