Economic damages: documented, and never capped
Economic damages are the receipt-backed part of a claim: medical expenses already incurred, lost wages, property damage, and reasonably anticipated future medical care or lost earning capacity tied to the injury. In Alaska, this category has no statutory ceiling at all — whatever your documented economic losses add up to, that's what you can claim for this half of the case.
Non-economic damages: defined by statute, and capped by it
Alaska's own damages statute, AS 09.17.010(a), defines noneconomic losses specifically: compensation for pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium, and other nonpecuniary damage. This is exactly the category subject to Alaska's statutory cap — the greater of $400,000 or life expectancy × $8,000, higher for severe permanent impairment or disfigurement.
Why this split genuinely matters more here
In a state with no cap at all, mixing up the two categories is mostly a documentation issue. In Alaska, it's a real financial one: because only the non-economic side is capped, a thorough, well-documented economic damages tally directly increases the uncapped portion of your claim — medical bills, every lost shift, every bit of reduced earning capacity, all counted in the category that has no ceiling.
Loss of consortium sits on the capped side
One detail worth flagging: loss of consortium — a spouse's claim for the loss of companionship and support — is explicitly listed among Alaska's non-economic losses, meaning it shares the same statutory cap as pain and suffering, rather than being treated as a separate, uncapped claim.