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 jury-trial ruling that protects both methods' results
In many states, a large multiplier or per diem calculation ultimately runs into a statutory cap that limits what a plaintiff can actually recover. Washington has no such ceiling — the state Supreme Court's 1989 ruling in Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp. specifically protected the jury's constitutional role in determining the amount of damages, striking down a legislative cap that would have overridden it. Whichever method produces the larger, better-supported figure stands on its own before the jury, without a statutory backstop reducing it afterward.
That raises the stakes of getting the calculation right
Without a cap acting as a safety net, the underlying multiplier or per diem calculation itself carries more weight in a Washington case — there's no fallback figure a defendant can point to if a jury's noneconomic award turns out to be large. This doesn't favor one method over the other, but it does make choosing and documenting the right inputs genuinely consequential.
Neither is required by Washington law
Both methods remain negotiating tools, not a formula Washington courts are required to apply. A jury retains full discretion to award whatever amount it finds appropriate for noneconomic damages, with no statutory ceiling waiting to reduce that figure afterward.