Examples of “schedules of damages” used in Europe and the United States

The use of “schedules of damages” to establish compensation amounts for injured parties appears to be more common in European personal injury or death compensation situations than in the similar legal situations in the United States. The major exception to this statement is the state-based system of workers’ compensation covering employer liability in personal injury and death claims in the United States. Other chapters in this book largely concentrate on comparisons between the uses of Ogden Table multipliers in awarding pecuniary damages in the United Kingdom compared to actuarial methods for calculating such damages in the United States. The two chapters dealing with non-pecuniary damages and scheduled awards deal with methods used to award such damages in the United States and in Europe in individual civil torts. This chapter provides an overview of a number of scheduled damages schemes in both the United States and Europe for the purpose of comparison. The schemes selected address both general and special damages.