How this estimate is built
Your medical expenses and lost wages are your economic damages — the easy-to-document part. We then apply the multiplier method, the same approach insurers and attorneys use industry-wide, to estimate pain and suffering: your economic damages multiplied by a factor of 1.5 to 5, depending on how serious the injury actually was.
Arizona's constitutional ban on damage caps
Arizona is one of only five states whose constitution directly bars capping personal injury damages. Article 2, Section 31 of the Arizona Constitution states plainly: "No law shall be enacted in this state limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the death or injury of any person." Because this protection sits in the constitution rather than an ordinary statute, the legislature can't simply pass a law to cap damages the way lawmakers have in many other states — it would take a constitutional amendment. That means no cap on economic damages, non-economic damages, or punitive damages in an ordinary Arizona personal injury case.
Your own fault always matters, by any amount
Arizona follows pure comparative negligence: your recovery is reduced by your own percentage of fault, whatever that percentage turns out to be. There's no threshold where fault wipes out the claim entirely — even at 90% fault, the remaining 10% is still yours. See our Arizona comparative negligence calculator for the full rule.