The Reasonable Certainty Requirement: What It Means and Why It Matters in Economic Damages
When a lawsuit involves monetary harm, courts often have to answer a practical question: What did this problem or event cost? The answer is what lawyers refer to as economic damages. In plain terms, economic damages are the financial losses tied to an event, like lost profits, lost business value, extra expenses, or other measurable dollars a person or company says they would not have lost “but for” the wrongdoing or adverse event. Because those losses often involve estimating what would have happened in a world that never occurred, courts apply a check on how those numbers are built. That check is the reasonable certainty requirement.