curative damages

a sum of money awarded to a charity on behalf of the plaintiff in a civil lawsuit. Conceptually similar to split recovery, curative damages were first invoked in the United States in a 1995 Ohio case in which the parents of a son who died when his car collided with a train sued the railroad and then donated their monetary award to an organization promoting railroad crossing safety. The intent is thus to “cure” a problem by achieving a social good that offsets the harm done by the defendant, rather than to punish the defendant (as in punitive damages) or to make amends to the plaintiff (as in compensatory damages).

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Psychology term of the day

May 10th 2024

cyclopia

n. a congenital disorder characterized by the merging of the two eye orbits into a single cavity that contains one eye. Cyclopia is associated with trisomy 13.