Nominal damages: the famous $1 verdict where everybody wins, yet everybody loses. What is their origin in civil rights cases, when should they be awarded, and by whom?
The ‘Carey’ Case
The concept of nominal damages in federal civil rights cases originated in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247 (1978). Plaintiffs were students who were suspended from public school without procedural due process. For reasons that are unclear, plaintiffs “put no evidence in the record to qualify their damages” (including whatever emotional damages they may have suffered), leaving the record “completely devoid of any evidence which could even form the basis of a speculative inference measuring the extent of their injuries.”
