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When tortious conduct causes harm to property, the main objective of an award of damages is full compensation. The damages are intended to put the plaintiff into the position they would have been in if the defendant's tort had not occurred. This principle is easy to state but problems arise when quantifying the loss in particular cases. There are two basic approaches which can be used to assess the amount of loss. Click on each for an explanation.
What if one approach produces a different figure from the other? Then the court must decide which calculation most accurately reflects the plaintiff's loss. The cost of repairs/restoration will not be awarded if those costs are much greater than the decrease in the value of the damaged property. But if property has some special attribute that makes it hard to replace, the cost of repairs may be allowed even if the decrease in value is a smaller amount.
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