As the Court of Appeal said in Huff v. Price, supra, at 299: Punitive damages, by contrast [to aggravated damages] are a separate award against the defendant designed to impose a punishment on the defendant and to set an example to others who might seek to act in a similar way. Punitive damages are measured by the degree of moral culpability of the defendant. They are not designed to compensate the plaintiff and they are not measured by an assessment of the plaintiff's suffering. An element of wilfulness or recklessness such as would underlie a finding of guilt in a criminal act is likely to be present before punitive damages will be awarded. But the defendant's conduct need not be criminal. Mr. Justice McIntrye used such words to describe the conduct that would give rise to a claim for punitive damages as "harsh, vindictive, reprehensible and malicious," but Mr. Justice McIntyre acknowledged that he had not exhausted the available adjectives. The anomaly, of course, about punitive damages is that they are paid to the plaintiff and not to the state, even though the plaintiff should have been fully compensated by his award of compensatory damages, pecuniary, nonpecuniary and aggravated.
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