These pages are for general informational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice. Your situation may not fit the claim you think it would, but it may fit another. Only an attorney with comprehensive knowledge of employment law can tell you whether you have a claim. You should always consult with an attorney before taking or refraining from taking any action in your individual situation. 

Determining how much your case is worth is not an exact science. However, there are some general rules that allow us to make a good estimate. 

What you may recover, referred to as damages, generally falls into three categories: economic damages; noneconomic damages; and exemplary/punitive damages. 

Your economic damages are perhaps the easiest to calculate, although still somewhat complicated. Economic damages are simply the amount of money you will lose as a result of the defendant’s actions. 

Economic damages are the loss in compensation that you have incurred to date and the loss of compensation you are likely to suffer in the future. It is easiest to illustrate in the termination context, but this analysis also applies to denial or promotions or benefits.

Loss of compensation to date is easy to compute.  You simply determine what you would have earned to date and subtract the income you have earned in the interim. 

Future lost compensation is more difficult to compute, particularly if you are unemployed at the time that you consult our office.  If you have found another job since your termination, your future lost compensation will be your salary at your old employment less what you are earning presently multiplied over the number of years that there will be such a disparity.  For instance, if you were earning $50,000.00 at your previous employment and now are making $40,000.00 and have five years until retirement, your future damages would be $10,000.00 x 5 years or $50,000.00.

Future lost compensation is difficult to calculate when you have not yet found a job.  That is because you could find a job making more, the same, or less than you made at your last job.  The best we can do in ascertaining your future lost compensation is to make projections based on the labor market and your skills.

Non-economic damages compensate for the pain and suffering occasioned by a wrongful termination, harassment, retaliation or other employer action. There is no formula to determine what your non-economic damages may be. Rather, as employment attorneys, we rely our experience to determine how much non-economic damages you may recover. Generally, it is our experience that non-economic damages will not be significant in wrongful termination cases unless the facts of your case are particularly egregious. Of course, if the facts of your case are particularly egregious, there may be significant non-economic damages. For instance, in a hostile work environment case for harassment, non-economic damages can form the bulk of damages. In fact, we have recovered as much as $1.3 million in non-economic damages in a hostile work environment case in which the national origin harassment spanned over several years. 

In rare circumstances, you may be able to recover exemplary or punitive damages. Punitive damages are awarded in federal cases as punishment when the defendant’s conduct is especially harmful.

Michigan law does not provide for punitive damages or damages as punishment for reprehensible behavior. However, Michigan law does provide for exemplary damages. Exemplary damages allow the jury to award additional monetary damages for outrageous behavior. 

Both punitive damages in federal cases and exemplary damages in state law cases are extremely rare, but in the rare cases it is awarded, it can be significant. 

Depending on the type of case you have, there may be additional statutory damages, such as treble damages, which allow the court or jury to award three times the amount of economic damages when warranted. 

As a general rule for evaluating employment case damages such as discrimination, harassment, retaliation, etc., your total damages calculation is likely to be closely correlated to your economic damages. Again, this is not a bright line rule, and the particular facts of your case may make your case the exception. 

In contract cases, noneconomic damages and punitive/exemplary damages are generally not available, and your damages are limited to economic damages. However, there are exceptions, such as when the breach of contract is occasioned by independent tortious conduct. If any claim you have independent of the breach of contract claim provides for non-economic damages, you may be able to recover additionally on those claims. 

In summary, you can generally calculate what your case may be worth by adding up your economic damages and your noneconomic damages. This number will provide you with an estimate of what your case may be worth were you to win at trial. 

However, most cases do not go to trial but are settled beforehand. To determine what the settlement value of your case may be, attorneys multiply the potential trial damages by probability of success. For example, if your case may be worth $500k at trial, and we assess your case to have a 90% probability of success, the settlement value of your case is $450k.

While these general rules can provide you with a general estimate of what your case may be worth, only an experienced attorney can provide a relatively accurate assessment. Even then, due to the numerous, subjective factors involved, total damages are impossible to estimate to a certainty. There may also be statutory caps on the amount of damages you can recover.  

If you would like us to evaluate your case and how much it may be worth, contact Fett Law today. You can get a jump start on the process by completing our free online case evaluation form.