Fundamentals of Damages for Harms to Personal Property

This lesson serves as background and foundation for other lessons on damages for harms to personal property. It deals with general principles and basic measures of damages recoverable for harms to personal property.

Students will first be introduced to the interests of owners of personal property that are compensated in the law of damages. Then, in problems which raise some fundamental issues, they will be presented with the basic measures of damages. Later, some alternatives to the basic measures will be briefly explored, and students will be introduced to the "Rule of Certainty" in the proof of damages. The substantive causes of action available for recovering damages for harms to personal property are ignored in this lesson.

In addition to working on this lesson, the student should also work the lesson on Basic Concepts of Damages in Torts to get a basic grounding in the area of torts damages.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the lesson, students will be able to:

1. Discuss the general principles and basic measures of damages recoverable for harms to personal property.
2. Explain the three interests in personal property that the law of damages in torts seeks to protect.
3. Analyze the methods by which the trier of fact could determine the amount of money as compensation for harm.