States With Caps on Wrongful Death Damages

By the FigureMyTax Editorial Team · How we calculate

Alaska caps wrongful death damages — but only the noneconomic portion, and under the same statute that governs severe personal injury cases generally, rather than a wrongful-death-specific figure.

Alaska folds wrongful death into its general cap

Under AS 09.17.010, wrongful death is explicitly listed alongside severe permanent physical impairment and severe disfigurement as automatically qualifying for Alaska's higher noneconomic damages tier — the greater of $400,000 or the decedent's life expectancy in years × $8,000. Economic damages, like the financial support the decedent would have provided, remain uncapped.

Not every state structures it this way

Some states set a wrongful-death-specific cap entirely separate from their ordinary injury cap, rather than folding it into the same framework Alaska uses. A handful of state constitutions go further and specifically prohibit capping wrongful death damages at all, reflecting a judgment that the loss of a life shouldn't face the same kind of legislative limitation as other noneconomic harms. Alaska has no such constitutional prohibition — its cap is a product of ordinary legislation (the 1997 tort reform act), which means it can also be amended by ordinary legislation, as a 2025-2026 bill proposing to adjust the formula illustrates.

Why the cap's real-world bite varies case by case

Because Alaska applies comparative fault before checking the cap — confirmed in Kisling v. Grosz (Alaska 2025) — the cap's practical effect depends heavily on how fault is allocated among defendants. A case with multiple defendants, each bearing only partial fault, may never actually hit the statutory ceiling even if the jury's total noneconomic damages finding is well above it.

This is general information, not legal advice, and the state comparisons above are illustrative, not an exhaustive survey. Confirm the current rule in any state with a licensed attorney there.