Mental Distress and Punitive Damages for Breach of Contract in the Supreme Court of Canada: Here's the Remedy, but Where's the Right?

摘要

For a decision whose ratio decidendi is remarkably unclear, Addis v Gramophone Co Ltd has cast a long shadow over the law of damages for breach of contract, lasting now for a century. Long understood to have created a general prohibition on both exemplary and mental distress damages, the impact of Addis on the common law for most of the 20th century was to dampen judicial consideration of the appropriateness of that prohibition, with the exception of the irrepressible Lord Denning M.R. However, during the first decade of the 21st century, both the House of Lords and the Supreme Court of Canada have revisited the prohibition and carved out exceptions which potentially threaten to overtake the general prohibition and certainly to cast considerable light on when damages should be awarded to compensate for mental distress resulting from breach of contract and to exemplify and punish outrageous conduct in breach of contract.