Punitive damages may be awarded, in an appropriate case and subject to the provisions of this Chapter, to punish a defendant for egregiously wrongful acts and to deter the defendant and others from committing similar wrongful acts.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1D-1
Purpose of punitive damages
Applied in 12 court decisions — leading case 133 N.C. App. 364 - Hutelmyer v. Cox (1999)
Most recently applied in Joyce McKiver v. Murphy-Brown, LLC (November 2020)
1995, c. 514, s. 1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: North Carolina General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain North Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.