How this estimate is built
Your medical expenses and lost wages are your economic damages — the easy-to-document part, and these are never capped in Hawaii. 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 — then checked against Hawaii's cap.
A cap that reaches further than most states'
HRS § 663-8.7 limits non-economic damages — pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life — to a maximum award of $375,000. What makes Hawaii distinctive is scope: in most states that cap non-economic damages, the cap applies only to medical malpractice. Hawaii's applies broadly across almost any personal injury tort case, medical malpractice included.
Real exceptions carve out some cases
The cap doesn't apply to tort actions enumerated in HRS § 663-10.9(2), which generally covers certain cases involving intentional misconduct and some scenarios with multiple at-fault parties. Whether a specific claim falls under one of these exceptions is a fact-specific legal question.
Your own fault still has a hard cutoff
Hawaii follows modified comparative negligence under HRS § 663-31: if your fault is 50% or less, your recovery is reduced proportionally. Reach 51% fault, and you recover nothing. See our Hawaii comparative negligence calculator for the full rule.