What Your Case Is Worth: Damages, Caps, and Comparative Fault

Every injured person wants to know the number. The honest answer is that no one can give you a reliable number in the first week, and anyone who does is guessing. What we can do is explain how Ohio law builds the number, which factors move it, and where the legislature has put a ceiling on it.

Two kinds of damages

Ohio divides compensatory damages, the money meant to make up for what you lost, into two categories defined in R.C. 2315.18(A).

Economic loss is everything with a receipt or a pay stub: lost wages and salary, lost earning capacity, medical bills, rehabilitation, medications, medical equipment, and the cost of care you will need in the future. For a serious injury, future medical care is often the largest single item; see our post on proving future medical expenses in Ohio. Under R.C. 2315.18(B)(1), there is no cap on economic damages.

Noneconomic loss is the human cost: pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, mental anguish, and loss of society, consortium, and companionship. These are the damages that reflect what the injury did to your life rather than to your bank account. They are also the damages the legislature chose to limit.

The noneconomic damages cap

R.C. 2315.18(B)(2) caps noneconomic damages in most injury cases at the greater of $250,000 or three times your economic loss, up to a maximum of $350,000 per plaintiff and $500,000 per occurrence. When several family members are injured in one crash, their noneconomic damages together cannot exceed $500,000 under this provision.

Two things follow. First, economic damages drive the number: a plaintiff with $100,000 in medical bills and wage loss can recover up to $300,000 in noneconomic damages, while a plaintiff with $20,000 in economic loss is limited to $250,000. Documenting every dollar of economic loss is how we raise the ceiling. Second, the judge applies the cap after the verdict; the jury is not told about it.

The exceptions that remove the cap

R.C. 2315.18(B)(3) lifts the cap entirely when the plaintiff has suffered either:

• permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, or loss of a bodily organ system; or
• permanent physical functional injury that permanently prevents the injured person from being able to independently care for self and perform life-sustaining activities.

Whether an injury fits these categories is one of the most consequential questions in an Ohio injury case. A spinal fusion, an amputation, significant scarring, a brain injury that leaves someone unable to live alone, loss of a kidney or spleen: these are the cases where the cap may not apply. Establishing the exception takes medical testimony and careful preparation, one more reason to involve a lawyer early.

What the courts have said

The Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the cap against a facial constitutional challenge in Arbino v. Johnson & Johnson, 116 Ohio St.3d 468, 2007-Ohio-6948, holding that R.C. 2315.18 and the punitive damages statute, R.C. 2315.21, are constitutional on their face.

Nine years later, the court showed how hard the cap can fall. In Simpkins v. Grace Brethren Church of Delaware, Ohio, 149 Ohio St.3d 307, 2016-Ohio-8118, a jury awarded a teenager who had been raped by her pastor $3.5 million in noneconomic damages. The trial court reduced that to $250,000 under the cap, and the Supreme Court affirmed, rejecting her argument that the cap was unconstitutional as applied to her.

Then, in Brandt v. Pompa, 171 Ohio St.3d 693, 2022-Ohio-4525, a jury awarded $20 million in noneconomic damages to a woman who had been sexually abused as a child, and the trial court cut it to $250,000. This time the Supreme Court held that applying the cap to her was arbitrary and unreasonable and violated the due-course-of-law guarantee of the Ohio Constitution. Brandt did not strike down the cap; it held the cap unconstitutional as applied to a victim of intentional criminal conduct committed against a child. But it opened a door that Simpkins had seemed to close, and the question of how far that door opens is still being litigated. We track the latest developments in our post on the Ohio noneconomic damages cap.

For most crash and fall cases, the cap applies unless your injury fits an exception in R.C. 2315.18(B)(3), and building the record to prove that exception is our job from day one.

Punitive damages

Punitive damages punish rather than compensate. Under R.C. 2315.21, they are available only when you prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that the defendant acted with malice or aggravated or egregious fraud, or knowingly authorized or ratified such conduct by an employee. Drunk driving and some commercial trucking conduct can meet that standard; ordinary carelessness does not.

R.C. 2315.21 caps punitive damages at two times the compensatory damages awarded, and for individuals and small employers at the lesser of that amount or ten percent of net worth, up to $350,000. The statute also requires a bifurcated trial, meaning the jury decides compensatory damages first and only then hears evidence on punitive damages.

Comparative fault

Ohio uses a "modified comparative negligence" system. Under R.C. 2315.33, you can recover damages as long as your share of fault is not greater than the combined fault of everyone else, which means you are barred only if you were more than 50 percent at fault. If you were 50 percent or less at fault, your compensatory damages are reduced by your percentage. A $200,000 verdict with 20 percent fault on the plaintiff becomes $160,000.

R.C. 2307.23 requires the jury to assign a percentage of fault to the plaintiff, to each defendant, and to anyone else who contributed, including people who settled or were never sued, with the percentages totaling 100 percent. Defendants use this to point at empty chairs. R.C. 2307.22 then determines who pays: a defendant more than 50 percent at fault is jointly and severally liable for all of your economic damages, meaning you can collect the entire amount from that defendant; defendants at 50 percent or less pay only their share, and noneconomic damages are always paid in proportion to fault.

Adjusters love comparative fault because it lets them discount a claim without denying it. "Our insured was speeding, but you should have seen him coming" is a 20 percent haircut if you accept it. Fault is proven with evidence, not assigned by the person writing the check.

The factors that actually drive value

Two cases with identical injuries can have very different values. These are the variables that matter most:

• Liability clarity. A rear-end collision with a police report and a citation is worth more than a disputed intersection crash with no witnesses, because the risk of losing at trial is priced into every settlement.
• Permanence. An injury that heals completely is valued differently from one that will be with you for life. Permanence also unlocks the cap exceptions.
• Medical specials. The amount and nature of your treatment, surgery versus physical therapy, for example, and the credibility of the providers.
• Wage loss and earning capacity. Documented time off work, and expert testimony on reduced future earnings for permanent injuries.
• Insurance limits. A case is worth what can be collected. A $1 million injury caused by a driver with $25,000 in coverage and no assets is, in practical terms, a $25,000 case plus whatever your own UM/UIM coverage adds. Commercial trucking defendants, by contrast, typically carry limits of $750,000 or more; see our truck accident page.
• Venue. Juries in different Ohio counties value the same injury differently, and insurers know it.
• Credibility. Yours, your doctors', and your witnesses'. Gaps in treatment, inconsistent statements, and social media posts all cost money.
• Liens. The net to you after health insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid is repaid. We explain how that works, and how liens get reduced, in Medical Bills, Health Insurance, and Liens.

Why "settlement calculators" are nonsense

You will find websites offering to calculate your settlement by multiplying your medical bills by a number between one and five. Ignore them. The "multiplier" was never law, and it has nothing to say about caps, comparative fault, policy limits, or liens. Insurers use valuation software of their own, but it is designed to produce low numbers, and even adjusters treat it as a starting point. The only way to value a case is to gather the evidence, understand the injury's trajectory, identify every available policy, and compare the result to what juries in your venue have actually done. That is what you are hiring a lawyer to do.

Wrongful death damages

When a crash takes a life, Ohio's wrongful death statute, R.C. 2125.02, allows the decedent's personal representative to recover on behalf of the surviving spouse, children, parents, and other next of kin. The spouse, children, and parents are presumed to have suffered damages. R.C. 2125.02(D) lists the categories: loss of the decedent's financial support, loss of services, loss of society (companionship, consortium, care, guidance, and advice), loss of prospective inheritance, and the mental anguish of the survivors.

Wrongful death claims are separate from the estate's claim for the decedent's own pain and suffering before death, and both may be pursued. See our wrongful death page.

Key takeaways

• Economic damages are uncapped; documenting every dollar also raises the noneconomic cap.
• R.C. 2315.18 caps noneconomic damages at the greater of $250,000 or three times economic loss, up to $350,000 per person, unless your injury is permanent and substantial under (B)(3).
• Arbino upheld the cap on its face; Simpkins applied it harshly; Brandt held it unconstitutional as applied to a child-abuse victim. The exceptions are where serious cases are won.
• You can recover if you were 50 percent or less at fault, reduced by your percentage.
• Policy limits, liability clarity, permanence, venue, and credibility drive value far more than any formula.