Noneconomic Damage Amounts in Personal Injury Cases: Linking the Value to Injury Following Recent Decisions

This CLE webinar will offer guidance about the quantity and quality of evidence needed to support the amount of noneconomic damages requested or the amount a jury actually awards if the verdict is appealed. The panel will discuss recent developments about 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 or affirmed on appeal.

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 and how to demonstrate a connection between the injuries sustained and the amount of damages requested.