damages
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 487 U.S. 879 - Bowen v. Massachusetts · 1988Most cited · 2,351 citing opinions
money awarded as reparation for injury resulting from breach of legal duty.
How the Supreme Court has restated “damages”
Each Supreme Court definition of “damages,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “damages”
Court decisions citing the 5 opinions that defined “damages” — 3,651 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 5 definitions, chronological · 1925–2006
- ORIGINAL
The loss for which the plaintiff is entitled to be indemnified is 'the loss of what the contractor would have had if the contract had been performed,' it happens at the moment when the contract is broken, just as it does when a tort is committed, and the plaintiff's claim is for the amount of that loss valued in money at that time.
breach-date rule
Damages,' however, have historically been awarded both for injury to property and injury to the person. The word 'damages' as used in 46 U.S.C. § 781 includes damages recoverable by a personal representative because of the death of a human being. Death is the supreme personal injury.
Public Vessels Act
damages exclusive of fees.
pecuniary compensation or indemnity, which may be recovered in the courts." Black's 466 (emphasis added).