Economic damages: the documented, countable losses
Economic damages are the straightforward, receipt-backed part of a claim. In a Washington personal injury case, this generally includes medical expenses already incurred, lost wages from time away from work, property damage, and reasonably anticipated future medical care or lost earning capacity tied directly to the injury.
Non-economic damages: the subjective losses
Non-economic damages cover the losses that don't come with a receipt: pain, suffering, and inconvenience, among other nonpecuniary harm. These are inherently harder to quantify, which is exactly why the multiplier method exists — to translate a documented economic figure into a reasoned estimate of the non-economic side.
The exact formula that got struck down
Washington's 1986 Tort Reform Act capped noneconomic damages using a specific formula: the state's average annual wage, multiplied by 0.43, multiplied by the plaintiff's life expectancy. In Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp. (1989), a mesothelioma case where a jury had awarded $477,200 in noneconomic damages before the trial judge applied the formula to reduce it to just $125,136.45, the Washington Supreme Court held the formula unconstitutional — it improperly substituted a legislative calculation for the jury's own factual determination of damages.
A statute the legislature chose to remove entirely
Rather than leave an unenforceable law on the books, Washington lawmakers formally repealed the capped-damages statute in the early 1990s. The reasoning was candid: it was extremely unlikely the state Supreme Court would ever reverse itself, and keeping an unconstitutional statute in the code was considered unnecessarily misleading to the public.
Later attempts, all unsuccessful
The idea of a cap resurfaced in the early 2000s with bills proposing a $400,000 limit (with an exception for reckless, willful, or wanton conduct) and a separate $350,000 limit explicitly contingent on either a future court reversal or a constitutional amendment. A companion proposal would have asked voters to amend the constitution itself to authorize such caps. None of these measures became law, and Washington remains a state with no cap on noneconomic damages today.