Legal term
Punitive Damages
Updated Jul 20, 20262 sources
In a sentence
Damages awarded to punish egregious conduct rather than compensate injury — the source of headline mass-tort verdicts, and the portion most often reduced on appeal.
Compensatory damages pay for what you lost; punitive damages punish and deter.
Availability and caps vary sharply by state. In settlement talks punitive exposure is leverage more than expectation — settlements price risk, and most individual recoveries contain no separately identified punitive component.
