Glossary
Compensatory damages
Money awarded to a plaintiff to make up for actual losses caused by the defendant. The goal is to put the plaintiff back in the position they would have been in if the harm hadn't happened.
Compensatory damages are the workhorse of civil recovery. They include both economic damages (medical bills, lost wages, property damage: things with a dollar number on them) and non-economic damages (pain and suffering, emotional distress: things harder to quantify).
Some states have caps on certain non-economic damages, especially in medical malpractice cases. The amount of compensatory damages is usually decided by the jury (or judge in a bench trial) based on the evidence presented at trial.