In the beginning, there were courts of chancery separate and apart from courts of law. Chancery courts would deal with financial or commercial damages, while courts of law would deal with noneconomic personal losses. One could not get an award for pain and suffering from a chancery court just as an injunction would not issue from a court of law.
Since those days of yore, courts across the country have largely abandoned or otherwise merged those distinctions. While New Jersey and Delaware still have chancery courts (and Philadelphia has a commerce court), there is no strict preclusion from obtaining noneconomic damages from those courts of otherwise general jurisdiction. Likewise, causes of action have similarly merged; for example, commercial disparagement remedies financial losses as well as reputational harms.
