DAMAGES
Damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss of injury. To vindicate the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused the anticipated loss. It refers to the sum of money the law imposes for breach of some duty or violation of some right. To be recognized at law, the loss must involve damage to property, or mental or physical injury.
PROXIMATE CAUSE
The conduct of the wrongdoer must be proximate in order to receive any kind of damages by the claimant. This legal concept is known as the principle of Proximate Cause. Proximate cause means “legal cause”, or the cause that the law recognizes as the primary cause of the injury. It is an action that produced foreseeable consequences without intervention from anyone else. If a defendant could not reasonably have foreseen that someone might be hurt by their actions, there may be no liability.
For instance, a live reporting of news is going on the television and the camera captures a car accident due to a truck’s negligence. Here, the proximate cause is the truck driver being negligent that caused the car to bump into a tree. ‘A’ who is weak at heart watches the accident on live television and suffers from a nervous shock. Here, the person getting a shock by watching the live television is not a proximate cause because the damage is too remote.
TYPES OF DAMAGES
There are mainly two types of Damages--- Compensatory damages and Punitive damages.
COMPENSATORY DAMAGES - These damages are paid to compensate the claimant for loss, injury, or harm suffered by the claimant as a result of another’s breach of duty that caused the loss. For instance, A makes a contract with B to buy 700 chairs for an event from him. So, if B fails to deliver the chairs, he must pay A compensatory damages for A’s loss as mentioned in the contract or decided by the court.
PUNITIVE DAMAGES - These damages are not awarded with the motive of compensating the claimant, but in order to punish the wrongdoer or reform or deter the defendant and other similar persons from pursuing a course of action such as that which damaged the plaintiff. For instance, a person ‘A’ is being fined by the railway authorities for travelling without a ticket.
Other types of damages are:-
NOMINAL DAMAGES – Nominal damages are very small damages awarded to show that the loss or harm suffered was technical rather than actual. Nominal damages are mostly awarded when there is an infringement of a legal right.
In a landmark judgment of Ashby v. White, a man was denied to vote at polling both in spite of having all the correct documents and for no apparent reason. The defendant argued that the plaintiff had not suffered any actual damage as the person whom the plaintiff would vote had already won the elections. The court said that even if there was no actual loss, his legal right was infringed and thus the defendant suffered nominal damages.
EXEMPLARY DAMAGES – These damages are imposed on the wrongdoer for his/her outrageous conduct. The intention behind paying the forfeit is to penalize the wrongdoer. Exemplary damages are often awarded in an action of tort where the defendant has not only committed a legal wrong but has also behaved in an outrageous and insulting manner.
For instance, a person ‘A’ publishes an article against a celebrity about how he had killed someone with no actual grounds.
LIQUIDATED DAMAGES – These damages are pre-written or already decided by the parties to a contract while forming a contract. This is done to avoid delay and assessment of damages. It is pre decided by the parties to also avoid unnecessary stipulation after a breach of contract by anyone of the parties. Section 74 of the Indian Contract Act deals with liquidated damages.
For instance, ‘A’, a baker makes a contract with ‘B’ to deliver a cake on B’s birthday. The contract also contains the pre-estimated amount of damage if any of the party breaches the contract. ‘A’ fails to deliver the cake and now has to pay the pre-estimated amount to ‘A’ as liquidated damages.
UNLIQUIDATED DAMAGES – Damages that are not pre-reckoned are called unliquidated damages. In cases where the parties to a contract have not decided the compensating amount, the court decides a reasonable compensating amount because of a breach of a contract.
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES – Consequential damages also known as special damages, are proven to have occurred because of the failure of an obligation of a contract. These are damages that are foreseeable and result from circumstances outside the contract.
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