Section 1808

Citation: Section 1808
Parent Document: McHugh v. Santa Monica Rent Control Board, 777 P.2d 91 (1989)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 1989-08-17
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1156663/mchugh-v-santa-monica-rent-cont... ↗

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A penalty against an individual for violating a legitimate state regulation is completely unlike a traditional common law action between individuals. It is inextricably intertwined with the essential regulatory purpose of the Board  to set and enforce stabilized rents. The fact that it is payable to an individual rather than the state does nothing to detract from its essentially regulatory purpose. If we conclude that "restitutive" compensatory damages to remedy individual harm are necessary to the fulfillment of the *390 legitimate regulatory purpose of an administrative agency, punitive damages for violation of the regulatory scheme must be conceded to be reasonably necessary. We may not like the penalty, we may regard it as harsh, but its imposition does not invade the judicial province of adjudicating private disputes between individuals.

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