Compensatory Damages
Compensatory damages refer to the monetary award given to a plaintiff in a lawsuit to compensate for the actual losses or injuries suffered. These damages aim to restore the plaintiff to the position they were in before the harm occurred, covering expenses such as medical bills, property damage, and lost wages. They are distinct from punitive damages, which are intended to punish the defendant.
7 Key excerpts on "Compensatory Damages"
eBook - ePub- M. Stuart Madden(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 18 Damages CONTENTS 18.1 Compensatory Damages 18.1.1 Generally 18.1.2 Personal Injury — Generally 18.1.3 Property Damage — Generally 18.1.4 Economic Loss Rule 18.2 Special Damages 18.2.1 Emotional Distress 18.2.2 Increased Risk 18.2.3 Medical Monitoring 18.2.4 Loss of Consortium 18.2.5 Loss of Enjoyment of Life 18.3 Economic Loss 18.4 Punitive Damages 18.4.1 Generally 18.4.2 Nature and Quality of Actor’s Conduct 18.4.3 Constitutional Limitations Damages 18.1 Compensatory Damages 18.1.1 Generally Where plaintiff is successful in proving that defendant’s tortious conduct proximately caused toxic harm, the jury, or, in a suit tried without a jury, the trial judge, will award Compensatory Damages. These Compensatory Damages will be gauged as the amount of money it will take to place plaintiff in the financial position he would have been in absent defendant’s wrongful conduct. It is immediately apparent that where plaintiff has suffered personal physical injury or disease from exposure to the toxin, an amount of money damages serves only as economic solace for an injury that is personal, emotional, and often debilitating. No pretense is maintained that Compensatory Damages can accurately repay a person who has suffered personal injury for their physical pain and suffering or their emotional distress. Similar incongruity exists where the available tort remedy is pecuniary and plaintiff’s claims involve dignitary or emotional hardship, such as claims for loss of consortium, lost enjoyment of life, or rational fear that a prior toxic exposure increases the risk that plaintiff will contract disease in the future. Other injury or damage from toxic harm is more suited to the logic of Compensatory Damages. Where a person has suffered personal physical injury, such claims may include past and future medical expenses, or cost of rehabilitation. Economic loss, such as lost income of a person or a business, may likewise be recovered in Compensatory Damages...
eBook - ePub- Brendan Greene(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...C hapter 15 Remedies 15.1 Introduction The main remedies in tort are damages and injunctions. Damages are financial compensation. Injunctions are mainly to stop the defendant from continuing with the tort. There are other remedies which apply to particular torts. 15.2 Damages Damages are compensation for the claimant. The aim of damages in tort is to put the claimant in the position they would have been in if the tort had not been committed. This principle is known as restitutio in integrum. A claimant is under a duty to mitigate his losses, which means they must take reasonable steps to reduce their losses. 15.2.1 Compensatory Damages The purpose is to compensate the claimant for the loss they have suffered. The law cannot restore someone to their original position in all cases especially in the case of personal injuries e.g. if the claimant loses a leg in a car accident. Damages are the only means to provide some compensation. Compensatory Damages can be divided into general damages and special damages. 15.2.1.1 General Damages General damages are damages which cannot be precisely measured e.g. damages for pain and suffering, or loss of future earnings. 15.2.1.2 Special Damages Special damages are damages which can be precisely measured e.g. loss of earnings up to the trial. 15.2.2 Non-Compensatory Damages The main aim of these damages is not to compensate. They could be either more or less than Compensatory Damages. 15.2.2.1 Contemptuous Damages This is a very small sum, usually the smallest coin, one penny. The court is saying that although there has been a technical breach of the law the case should not have been brought. 15.2.2.2 Nominal Damages This is a small sum of money, awarded where the defendant has committed a tort but the claimant has not suffered any damage. They could be awarded for torts actionable per se like trespass to land e.g...
...in some libel actions; iii) where statute expressly allows, e.g. Copyright Act 1958. 12.1.3 Non-Compensatory Damages 1 Usually compensated as ‘special damages’. 2 Usually little problem in calculating such losses. 3 With an economic loss the claimant must be restored as closely as possible to the position if the tort had not occurred. 4 Property damage is calculated according to: loss of the property and its value at the time of loss; cost of transporting replacement property if appropriate; loss of reasonably foreseeable profit; loss of use until the time the property is replaced; reduction in value if damaged but not lost, i.e. repair costs. 12.1.4 Damages in personal injury claims 1 This is divided into two groups. a) Special damages: this is pecuniary loss up to the date of trial; can include medical care, equipment, loss of earnings, etc.; but only such expenses as the court considers reasonable, so private medical care may well be refused. b) General damages or future damages: includes pecuniary losses, e.g. future earnings, medical costs, costs of care and special facilities; and also non-pecuniary loss, e.g...
eBook - ePubConstruction Law
An Introduction for Engineers, Architects, and Contractors
- Gail Kelley(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- RSMeans(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 21 CALCULATIONS OF DAMAGES The amount of money awarded to a plaintiff who has prevailed on a claim of loss or injury is referred to as the plaintiff’s damages. Most claims on construction projects are for breach of contract, and the damages are compensatory, which means they are designed to put the nonbreaching party in as good a position as it would have been in if the contract had been performed according to its terms. The rationale used to determine appropriate damages is referred to as the measure of damages. Typically, the measure of damages for breach of contract is the nonbreaching party’s expectation interest—in other words, how the party expected to benefit from the contract. Courts also refer to this as the party’s benefit of its bargain. A party is entitled to have the benefit of what it contracted for; when one party has lost the benefit of its bargain because the other party breached the contract, a court will try to restore that benefit. Generally, the rights of the parties are fixed at the time the contract was breached, and damages are measured as of that time. 21.1 Compensatory Damages Compensatory Damages for a breach of contract can include both direct costs and consequential costs that were reasonably foreseeable at the time the contract was executed (signed). Direct costs are typically costs that can be identified with and charged to a particular cause. For example, if the owner improperly rejected work, the contractor’s direct damages would be the cost to redo the work. Likewise, if the owner had to hire another contractor to repair defective work, the cost of the repair would be a direct cost. Proof of damages does not necessarily require exact calculations; it is usually acceptable to perform a reasonable estimate. 21.1.1 Consequential Damages Consequential damages, also known as special damages, are damages that were caused by the breach of contract but cannot be traced to the breach as easily as direct damages...
eBook - ePubMeasuring Business Interruption Losses and Other Commercial Damages
An Economic Approach
- Patrick A. Gaughan(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...This was pointed out by the Court in State Farm when it noted “The Compensatory Damages for the injury suffered here, moreover, likely were based upon a component which was duplicated by the punitive award.” 27 Particularly, when it is a significant amount, the compensatory award, while it should make the plaintiff whole, also serves as punishment for the defendant. This is because money is fungible and while we can give it different designations depending on the context of the activity, from the corporate payer’s point of view, it bears the same burden that any other cost would have. Earlier we have noted the significance of the State Farm decision which indicated that there should be a relationship between the amount of a punitive award and the Compensatory Damages. Specifically, the Court frowned on multiples more than single digits. After that 2003 decision, many believed it would change the relationship between punitive and Compensatory Damages. However, Eisenberg and Heise, using four Civil Justice Survey data sets, found that the relationship between punitive and Compensatory Damages has not changed over time. (*) In reaching that conclusion they did not find as significant an impact of the State Farm decision. They did, however, find a meaningful relationship between judge versus jury trials as a determining factor in the relationship. They assume that this is a function of the reasons that lead a plaintiff to pursue a jury trial versus a bench trial. Criminal Penalties and Punitive Damages in Civil Lawsuits Punitive damages in tort actions represent a dichotomy between private and public law. 28 The need for punishment in criminal actions is obvious. However, the introduction of punishment into civil actions, perhaps as a means of altering behavior, presents unique problems. One of the most fundamental of these is that criminal actions provide certain protections for criminal defendants that are lacking in civil proceedings...
- Jason Rudall(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Compensation is monetary relief for material and non-material loss. Satisfaction may include a formal acknowledgement of fault, recognition of the wrongful nature of the act committed, an apology or prosecutions of those responsible. Rehabilitation can be the provision of certain services to help with recovery from the damage suffered, such as medical care for example. Guarantees of non-repetition are declarations that wrongful acts will cease and might entail the adoption of specific measures or institutional reform to ensure the breach does not occur again. An obligation to repair damage in full can still be incumbent on the responsible State where there are concurrent causes of the damage, except in situations of contributory fault. This was the case in the Corfu Channel dispute. 6 Albania had not been responsible for laying the mines that damaged British naval ships, but it had been responsible for failing to warn the United Kingdom about them. Nevertheless, it was found liable to pay the full amount of the United Kingdom’s claim. 7 A similar approach was evident in the United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran case, in which Iran was responsible for failing to protect hostages seized by militant students who were not acting as organs or agents of the State. 8 This could similarly be the case where a natural event compounds damage. 9 That said, where part of the injury is severable from that caused by the responsible State, the responsible State may not be responsible for all the damage caused by its wrongful conduct...
eBook - ePub- Ernest J. Weinrib, Ernest J. Weinrib(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The Theoretical Framework On what basis can damages for tortious conduct be measured by the defendant’s gain rather than the plaintiff’s loss? This question recently has received increasing attention with the revival of interest in restitution throughout the common law world. The reason for this interest is not hard to see. Restitutionary damages for torts implicate fundamental issues in our conception of private law. On the one hand, they open up the possibility of a more nuanced assessment of damages both by extending the long-established jurisprudence of waiver of tort and by linking tortious liability with the appealing and newly invigorated principle of unjust enrichment. On the other hand,* they present an intellectual puzzle. If tort law is concerned with wrongful injury to the plaintiff, special arguments, are required to explain why, as a matter of justice, the remedy should refer to the gains of the defendant. The reparation of injury seems satisfied by compensating the plaintiff for his or her loss. To place into the plaintiff’s hands the defendant’s gain in excess of that loss seems to confer a windfall. My immediate excuse for revisiting this topic is to draw attention to the relevance of inquiring into the plaintiffs entitlement to damages measured by the defendant’s gain. Many of the current treatments of restitutionary damages for torts focus on the defendant’s desert in the aftermath of wrongdoing or on the social good that can be achieved by compelling the disgorgement of the wrongdoer’s gain...
