Pain and Suffering

Pain and suffering is the legal term for the non-financial harm an injury causes: physical pain, discomfort, anxiety, loss of sleep, loss of enjoyment of life, and similar effects. Lawyers call it non-economic damages, because no receipt or pay stub measures it. Economic damages, by contrast, cover things with a price tag, such as medical bills and lost wages.

Because there is no formula written into law, juries decide the amount based on the evidence, including how severe and long-lasting the injury is, medical testimony, and how the injury changed the person's daily life. Insurers and lawyers sometimes estimate it by multiplying economic losses or assigning a daily amount, but those are negotiating shortcuts, not rules.

The limits matter. Many states cap non-economic damages in some cases, especially medical malpractice claims, so a jury award for pain and suffering can be reduced to the cap after trial. In no-fault auto insurance states, you usually cannot claim pain and suffering against the other driver unless your injury meets a legal threshold.

Pain and suffering is central to individual injury cases, such as drug, medical device, and product defect lawsuits, and it is one reason those cases are usually filed individually or as a mass tort instead of a class action. In a class action, each person's pain differs too much to decide in one group trial, so class settlements usually pay for economic losses or set fixed amounts.

See class action vs. mass tort, class action vs. individual lawsuit, and examples like the hernia mesh lawsuits.