BarbriSFCourseDetails

Course Details

This CLE webinar will offer guidance on how plaintiffs can prove or defendants can challenge the amount of noneconomic damages. The panel will discuss new and clarified burdens of proof, plausible strategies for connecting amounts sought with the evidence, discovery strategies, and the types of arguments and techniques that get verdicts reversed on appeal.

Faculty

Description

Noneconomic damages such as mental anguish, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, emotional distress, etc. are the main component in most "super" verdicts. Plaintiffs seek to maximize them; defendants try to rein them in. Recovering them is a two-step process: establishing the existence of noneconomic injuries and then giving them a value.

Regarding Step 1, courts have always required plaintiffs to offer credible evidence that noneconomic injuries exist: their nature, duration, severity, and their connection to the defendants' actions. Courts, however, until recently, have given Step 2 short shrift. Not anymore.

Now many courts are requiring plaintiffs to show a rational connection, based on the evidence, between the injury and the amount claimed. This will require new strategies and careful planning.

Listen as this experienced panel of litigators offers insights and strategies on how to develop the evidentiary basis for valuing what is by definition subjective how to demonstrate a connection between the injuries sustained and the amount of damages requested.

Outline

  1. Strategies for valuing noneconomic damages
  2. Types of evidence that may be used
  3. Discovery strategies
  4. Use of experts
  5. Recent cases
  6. Standards of review on appeal

Benefits

The panel will review these and other key issues:

  • What are some methodologies that may be used to calculate the amount of pain and suffering damages?
  • What types of arguments are prohibited?
  • What is unsubstantiated anchoring and how is it detected?