Pain and Suffering Awards: They Shouldn't Be (Just) about Pain and Suffering

Peter A. Ubel and George Loewenstein

Journal of Legal Studies, 2008, vol. 37, issue S2, pages S195-S216

Abstract: In this paper, we challenge the conventional view that pain-and-suffering awards should be interpreted literally as a compensation for feelings of pain and suffering. People adapt to conditions as serious as paraplegia and blindness, returning rapidly to near-normal levels of happiness, which means that pain-and-suffering awards based literally on pain and suffering would be small. We argue that compensation for these types of conditions should be larger than would be dictated by pain and suffering alone because people legitimately care about more than just the pain and suffering that results from an injury; they also care about a variety of other factors, such as their capabilities to perform various functions, that often do not affect happiness. We propose the outlines of a method for determining noneconomic damages that divides the problem into three judgments, each to be made by the constituency most competent to make it. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

Date: 2008

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/529072 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:37:y:2008:i:s2:p:s195-s216

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS/order1.html

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Legal Studies is edited by Eric A. Posner and Thomas J. Miles

More articles in Journal of Legal Studies from University of Chicago Press
Address: The University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005 Chicago, IL 60637
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().