In any civil action brought for personal injury or death, except actions brought pursuant to the provisions of P.L.1972, c. 70 (C. 39:6A-1 et seq.), if a plaintiff receives or is entitled to receive benefits for the injuries allegedly incurred from any other source other than a joint tortfeasor, the benefits, other than workers' compensation benefits or the proceeds from a life insurance policy, shall be disclosed to the court and the amount thereof which duplicates any benefit contained in the award shall be deducted from any award recovered by the plaintiff, less any premium paid to an insurer directly by the plaintiff or by any member of the plaintiff's family on behalf of the plaintiff for the policy period during which the benefits are payable. Any party to the action shall be permitted to introduce evidence regarding any of the matters described in this act.
N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2A:15-97
Deduction of duplicate benefits
Known as the Punitive Damages Act
The act spans §§ 2–2 (79 sections).
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Waldorf v. Shuta (1998)
Most recently applied in Jean Dedmon v. Debbie Steelman (November 2017)
L. 1987,c.326.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: New Jersey Legislature. Digitized from the New Jersey Legislature bulk statutes download. Reproduced from public-domain New Jersey statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.