The multiplier method: scaling off your damages
The multiplier method is the industry's default approach. It takes your economic damages — medical bills and lost wages — and multiplies that total by a factor generally between 1.5 and 5, chosen based on injury severity, recovery time, and whether any permanent impairment is involved.
The per diem method: valuing each day
The per diem (Latin for "per day") method works differently. It assigns a specific dollar value to a single day of pain and suffering and multiplies that rate by the total number of days of documented recovery, tying the value directly to time rather than to the size of your medical bills.
A genuinely Kansas-specific split: it depends on survival
For an ordinary Kansas injury claim where the person survived, neither method runs into a cap at all — the Kansas Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Hilburn v. Enerpipe removed the prior noneconomic damages cap entirely. But if the injury instead resulted in death, Kansas Code § 60-1903 still caps non-pecuniary damages at $250,000 — a separate statute the Hilburn decision never touched. That means the method used to estimate pain and suffering matters enormously in a surviving-plaintiff case, but can be overridden by the ceiling in a wrongful death case.
When the per diem method still earns its keep
Below any applicable cap, the per diem method can still carry real persuasive weight in a case with a long, clearly bounded recovery period, where counting days produces an easy-to-follow number for a jury or an adjuster — sometimes a more compelling story than a multiplier applied to a modest economic damages total.
Neither is required by Kansas law
Both methods remain negotiating tools, not a formula Kansas courts are required to apply. A jury retains discretion to award whatever amount it finds appropriate for pain and suffering — subject only to the wrongful death cap when that statute applies.