States With Caps on Wrongful Death Damages

By the FigureMyTax Editorial Team · How we calculate

Arkansas doesn't cap wrongful death damages — and unlike some states where that's simply never been legislated, Arkansas's constitution affirmatively forbids it, tested in a real $42 million case.

A constitutional ban, proven in practice

Under Arkansas Constitution Article 5, Section 32, no law can limit damages for causing death — this applies to wrongful death claims exactly as it does to ordinary personal injury. In Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer, 385 S.W.3d 822 (Ark. 2011), the Arkansas Supreme Court relied on this provision to strike down a statutory cap and reinstate a $42 million punitive damages award, confirming the protection holds up against real, high-stakes challenges.

How other states handle it differently

Nationally, states take genuinely different approaches. Some fold wrongful death into the same noneconomic damages cap that applies to severe personal injury generally. Others set an entirely separate wrongful-death-specific cap. A handful of states, Arkansas among them, prohibit capping either category by constitutional provision.

Fault, not a dollar cap, is the real limit

Without a dollar ceiling, the biggest practical constraint on an Arkansas wrongful death recovery is the state's modified comparative fault rule: if the decedent was found 50% or more at fault, the entire claim is barred, regardless of how large it would otherwise have been. This all-or-nothing fault cutoff does more to limit outcomes in practice than any cap could.

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.