Assessing Economics Damage in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Litigation: The State of New York

Contributors to the Journal of Forensic Economics are compiling a stateby-state series of papers on how economic damages are assessed in personal injury and wrongful death cases. This paper discusses the rules of the court, the court system, and case law for the state of New York. New York’s system is unique in several important ways. The state has passed statutes that specify in some detail both the method to be used to calculate damages and how a jury’s verdict is to be transformed into a judgment. New York Civil Practice Law & Rules (CPLR) Articles 50-A and 50-B provide for separate and different treatment of medical malpractice cases and for all other standard torts, respectively. As a result, the damages sections of the two statutes provide specific guidance to the economic expert. Further, except in medical malpractice death cases, New York is different from other states in that its court does not require testifying economic damages experts to discount to present value. This paper discusses these issues and others to familiarize economic damages experts with the relevant court rules and rulings, as well as accepted practice, when performing economic damage appraisals in the state of New York.