What Are “Nominal Damages” in a Georgia Personal Injury Case?
When Georgia personal injury lawyers talk about damages, they refer to the financial compensation that a plaintiff may seek for their losses arising from a defendant’s negligent conduct. For example, if a driver rear-ends your car and you suffer an injury that requires medical treatment (like whiplash), you can seek damages to pay for your medical bills and any time you missed from work during your recovery. These are known as economic or “special” damages in Georgia.
There are also non-economic or “general” damages. These refer to intangible losses that do not come with an exact price tag. This includes your pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment of life due to a car accident. Again, you cannot precisely quantify such damages, but everyone knows they exist.
Damages Without Harm
Economic and non-economic damages both presuppose that the plaintiff suffered some demonstrable harm. But what about a situation where a defendant was clearly negligent but the plaintiff suffered no harm? Can the plaintiff still demand compensation simply because the defendant violated their legal rights?
The answer is yes, but with an important qualifier. Georgia law has long recognized the concept of “nominal damages.” In effect, this is damages without harm. Nominal damages are a “trivial sum” awarded the plaintiff simply to vindicate their legal rights.
If you have ever read a news story about a jury awarding a successful plaintiff $1 in compensation, that was likely a case of nominal damages. Indeed, $1 is the most common award of nominal damages. And in 2025, the Georgia Supreme Court made it clear that while juries could theoretically award more than $1 in nominal damages, substantially higher amounts can and would be struck down.
The case before the Supreme Court, Walmart Stores, LP v. Leverette, involved a woman shopped while riding a motorized scooter at a Georgia Walmart. Two employees moving a large box bumped into the plaintiff. Even though the box only made “light” contact with the plaintiff, she was later diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury.
The plaintiff subsequently filed a personal injury lawsuit against Walmart. Walmart argued that the plaintiff’s brain injury was likely the result of various preexisting medical conditions and had nothing to do with the contact with the box. The jury ultimately determined that Walmart was liable for the box incident but awarded only nominal damages.
More precisely, the jury awarded $1 million in nominal damages. The Georgia Supreme Court held that was excessive. The Court reiterated longstanding common law principles and held that nominal damages must be an amount “that a rational juror could conclude is a ‘trivial sum’: important for the fact of the award but not meaningful for its amount.” So while there was no “precise upper bound” for nominal damages in Georgia, “no rational juror” could award nominal damages of $1 million.
Contact an Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyer
Determining the amount of compensation owed in any personal injury case requires consideration of a number of factors. An experienced Atlanta personal injury attorney can review the facts of your case and offer you guidance and legal advice in this area. Contact Morain & Buckelew, LLC, today at (404) 448-3146 to schedule a free consultation.
Source:
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3242793210675074787