Economic Damages

Economic damages are the out-of-pocket and financial losses caused by an injury or illness that can be calculated in dollars. In an asbestos case, they typically include past and future medical bills, lost wages, lost retirement and benefits, the value of household services you can no longer perform, and out-of-pocket costs like travel to treatment.

Origin

The concept comes from common-law tort doctrine, which has long divided compensation into measurable monetary losses ("special" or economic damages) and intangible harms ("general" or non-economic damages). Courts formalized this split in the 19th century to give juries a structured way to value injury claims.

Significance in Asbestos Context

For someone with mesothelioma, lung cancer, or asbestosis, economic damages often run into hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars because treatment is expensive and the disease frequently ends a person's ability to work. Your legal team will build this number from documents you and your family help gather, medical bills, insurance EOBs, pay records, tax returns, and projections from medical and economic experts about future treatment and lost earnings. Economic damages are usually the least disputed category in court because they are tied to paper records, but defendants will still challenge future costs, life expectancy assumptions, and which expenses were caused by the asbestos disease versus other conditions. In states that cap non-economic damages, economic damages may become the largest piece of any recovery, which makes thorough documentation especially important.

Example Sentence

Her attorney explained that the economic damages in her mesothelioma case would include the full cost of her chemotherapy and surgery, the wages she lost after leaving her job, and an estimate of the home care she would need over the coming year.

Related Terms

Non-Economic Damages, Compensatory Damages, Punitive Damages, Loss of Consortium, Lost Earning Capacity, Life Care Plan

Notes

• Start a single folder (paper or digital) for every medical bill, insurance statement, prescription receipt, and travel/parking record related to your diagnosis. These directly support economic damages.
• Preserve pay stubs, W-2s, tax returns, and any documentation of missed work, demotions, or early retirement caused by your illness; if you are self-employed, save invoices and profit-and-loss records.
• Ask your attorney whether a life care planner and a forensic economist will be retained to project future medical and wage losses. These experts are standard in serious asbestos cases.
• If a spouse or family member has cut back work to provide care, document those hours and lost wages; caregiver losses can sometimes be recovered.
• Check whether your state caps non-economic damages. If it does, thorough proof of economic losses becomes even more important to the overall recovery.