TEA.11.3

Description

Pecuniary damage is a policy choice. The law (unlike its legal sibling equity) offers the remedy of damages, and thus constrains recoverable losses to those loses that are captured by pecuniary values. Objectivity might be gained, but much can be lost, without noticing the loss when public policy requires loss to equate with a market’s monetary valuation. An assumption that damages paid by the defendant are a mathematical identity with the plaintiff’s loss fosters an erroneous perception of efficiency. In short, the trier of fact only is authorized to rack the value1 of those injuries the law chooses to recognize.