measure of damages

As we have had occasion to point out in a former chapter, the rule as to “measure of damages” is laid down by the Court and applied by the jury, whose application of it is, to a certain extent, subject to review.

Ordinary damages are a sum awarded as a fair measure of compensation to the plaintiff, the amount being, as near as can be estimated, that by which he is the worse for the defendant’s wrong-doing, but in no case exceeding the amount claimed by the plaintiff himself.

With regard to the measure of damages, the same principles are to a great extent applicable to cases of contract and of tort, and even rules which are generally peculiar to one branch of the law may be applied to the other in exceptional classes of cases.

yet an important distinction was introduced by Justinian, who enacted that in the former case the damages recoverable by this computation of lucrum cessans and damnum indirectum should not exceed the double of the immediate value, hoc quod interest dupli quantitatem minime excedere, Cod.

Here, in consequence, probably, of the peculiar wording of the edict, the measure of damages, the simplum or unit to be quadrupled, is not the plaintiff’s interest but the market value, Dig.

in this case the loss of the plaintiff does not include the damages he has indirectly experienced (damnum indirectum) nor the gain he has failed to realize (lucrum cessans).

and I have found it possible to extract from the quaint texts of the Book of Aicill some extremely sensible rulings on the difficult subject of the Measure of Damages, for which it would be vain to study the writings of Lord Coke, though these last are relatively of much later date.