Damages Flashcards
Examples of pecuniary damages
Lost wages, medical bills, property repair
O’Shea holding
Prior wages don’t cap lost future wages, discount for present value but account for inflation raises in future wages
O’Shea is about
Complications in lost future wages
O’Shea reasonin
Unlikely to find another job
RST economic damages
Can recover for all harm (present and future) caused by tort if reasonable certainty of proof
Feldman rule
Can recover both economic and non economic damages but must be separate in calculation
Feldman holding
Loss of earnings for child rearing years only to extent Ct find she would’ve worked BuT otherwise award for those years in lost enjoyment of life activities
Non economic damages are
Kind market struggles with (pain and suffering)
McMillan holding
Can’t use race based life expectancy data in calculating reduced life expectancy for damages
McMillan reasonin
Perpetuate exisiting biases, biological fiction, constitutional concerns
McDougald holding
Cognitive awareness required to recover for lost enjoyment of life, no separate instruction for PS vs lost enjoyment
McDougald reasoning
Damages to compensate not punish, if no awareness no utility to p
McDougald paradox
Injure more smaller recovery
US v, CB&I
Liable for damages for intangible environmental harms + other harms
Punitive damages usually only when
Bad intent or bad state of mind (civil procedure not as protective as criminal)
Kemezy holding A
Punitive damages justified when harms intangible/hard to compensate
Kemezy holding B
No overdeterrence concern because egregious behavior
Kemezy holding C
Important to signal abhorrence
Kemezy holding D
Necessary incentive against torts with low compensatory value or when tortious act concealable/lower chance of getting caught
Kemezy reasoning
Wealth irrelevant to CD but relevant to PD because how much loss hurts D depends on wealth
Kemezy says it is not P
Burden to produce evidence of D wealth (systematically bad for Ds with deep pockets)
State Farm rule
Must consider reprehensibility, disparity between CD and PD, and disparity between PD and civil penalties in comparable cases
State Farm holding
Ratio of PD to CD too big (145:1)
State Farm reasoning
PD raise due process concerns and prohibits excessive/arbitrary punishments (no notice of possibility)
Philip Morris holding
Cannot use PD to punish D for injury to non parties or to those to whom they directly represent and to whom they do not have opportunity to present every available defense
Goals of damages
CJ: make whole, CQ deter, both signal
