A burgeoning litigation backlog, exacerbated by COVID, requires the Bench and Bar to become more efficient in valuing personal injury actions, especially in the realm of non-pecuniary (pain and suffering) damages reviewed under CPLR 5501(c). The first step in this process involves eliminating a number of common misconceptions that have been repeated over and over in damages litigation for the past two decades. Through repetition, these errors have achieved a measure of traction they do not remotely deserve.

The largest impediment to accurately valuing cases arises from the myth that the Appellate Division is endorsing larger and larger awards, thereby signaling an abandonment of anything but lip-service to CPLR 5501(c). There is no such trend. And the absence of a trend is consistent with historically-low economic inflation since the turn of the century.