The penalty function method, presented many years ago, is an important nu- merical method for the mathematical programming problems. In this article, we propose a dual-relax penalty function approach, which is significantly different from penalty func- tion approach existing for solving the bilevel programming, to solve the nonlinear bilevel programming with linear lower level problem. Our algorithm will redound to the error analysis for computing an approximate solution to the bilevel programming. The error estimate is obtained among the optimal objective function value of the dual-relax penalty problem and of the original bilevel programming problem. An example is illustrated to show the feasibility of the proposed approach.