What's It Worth to You?

October 28, 2019

How do you decide how much your pain and suffering is worth?

An Arizona couple is suing police for using excessive force in a shoplifting arrest.

An immigration agent in Connecticut threatened a Honduran woman with deportation if she didn’t have sex with him, then raped her for seven years, impregnating her three times.

A police officer in St. Louis was passed over for promotion 23 times after he came out as being gay.

The Arizona couple wants $10 million.

The Honduran woman wants $10 million.

The St. Louis office was awarded $19 million in actual and punitive damages.

Maybe I’m out of touch here, but I think that, in most cases, after you pay for missed wages, medical costs, legal costs, and counseling for the entire family,  a cool million in punitive damages should cover pain and suffering. Even today, a million isn’t chump change for the average citizen. In the case of the woman who was raped over the course of years, I’d go higher, but I’m not sure how I’d calculate how much higher. 

I think we need to stop throwing numbers around, seemingly at random, and should address the serious imbalance in choosing how much we think our pain and suffering is worth.