Diminution in value is a legal term of art used when calculating damages in a legal dispute, and describes a measure of value lost due to a circumstance or set of circumstances that caused the loss. Specifically, it measures the value of something before and after the causative act or omission creating the lost value in order to calculate compensatory damages. [1]
In legal damages theories, diminution in value is often calculated for compensatory special damages when a loss is monetarily quantifiable, and for restitution or disgorgement damages when the loss has unfairly enriched a wrongdoer. [1]
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Legal remedies (Damages) |
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Person P has an apple cart which wrongdoer W runs over with a car. P depends upon the cart for selling apples as their sole source of income. P is able to salvage some of the parts from the damaged cart and gets the cart fixed using the salvaged parts. P goes back to selling apples the next week, but finds her customers have started to go elsewhere for their apples since she was not available for the week her cart was being repaired. In order to win back her customers P advertises her return and also sells her apples for a discount for a week.
P wants to recover the diminution in value of their business from W. In order to do this P must determine the cost of the repairs and damaged apples, their lost opportunity cost or profit loss (how much profit they would have made during the week they were unable to sell apples), the advertising costs, and the lost profit from having to sell at a discount for a week.
To determine the diminution in value of her business, P calculates:
After car accidents, the right to claim diminution in value depends on the country or state [2] and who is at fault. [3]
Major car rental companies do charge their renters for diminished value after accidents, unless the renter pays for a Damage waiver (Avis, [4] Budget, [5] National, [6] Thrifty [7] ). Some companies even say they alone will decide the diminution (Dollar, [8] Hertz" [9] ). Charging for diminution in value may not be allowed in California, Indiana, Nevada, New York, Wisconsin, Australia or New Zealand, since Hertz does not charge it in those locations. [9] Hertz does charge in Europe, the Middle East and Africa: "loss in value of the Car". [9]
When P's heirs have added up what they lost they'll have discovered the difference between what they would have had B not acted wrongfully, and what they ended up with: the diminution in value of the contract fund.
Adding to the example above, B kept both P's interest and dividends for its own use for a period of years and used these monies to invest in ventures which in turn earned profit and further interest for B. Thus B's misappropriation of P's funds not only deprived P and P's heirs of P's property, but further enriched B because B made a profit from its wrongful use and earned interest on that profit.
In this example, calculating the diminution in value of the contract fund that occurred by B's wrongdoing is helpful to a legal tribunal or settlement negotiation in discovering not only the value of property lost, but the initial enrichment value to B. It may not be possible to account for B's total enrichment in the fullness of time with a high degree of accuracy, but if B's profits made using P's money are calculable, the measure of B's profit disgorgement may accurately reflect a fair restitution for P when added to damages from the diminution of the contract fund.
Therefore, calculating the diminution in value of P's property is a primary factor in calculating either restitution or disgorgement damages, or both, in a case such as in this example.
Examples of usage in real property damage: Diminution In Value Appraisals used extensively by the legal and title industry in assessing damages. Elliott and Company DIV Appraisals
Courtney vs. Publix, Florida District Court of Appeal, (2d Cir.), No. 2D00-1485, 2001.FindLaw; and Kanner, Equity in Toxic Tort Litigation: Unjust Enrichment and the Poor. Law & Policy, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 209–230, April 2004.SSRN abstract and Law & Policy Journal
Example of usage in state legislation: North Carolina General Assembly, Auto Insurance/Diminution in Value, 2009.
Example of usage in bankruptcy and creditors' rights: Stuart, Court Denial of Request For Adequate Protection Does Not Trigger Superpriority Status, 2000.FindLaw
Legal terms glossary (Wiktionary)
Zalma and Wickert, First-Party Diminution In Value Cases In All 50 States.
Zalma, A Review of Diminution in Value Cases in the United States, 2008.
At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. To be recognised at law, the loss must involve damage to property, or mental or physical injury; pure economic loss is rarely recognised for the award of damages.
Capital gain is an economic concept defined as the profit earned on the sale of an asset which has increased in value over the holding period. An asset may include tangible property, a car, a business, or intangible property such as shares.
A hire purchase (HP), also known as an installment plan, is an arrangement whereby a customer agrees to a contract to acquire an asset by paying an initial installment and repaying the balance of the price of the asset plus interest over a period of time. Other analogous practices are described as closed-end leasing or rent to own.
Restitution and unjust enrichment is the field of law relating to gains-based recovery. In contrast with damages, restitution is a claim or remedy requiring a defendant to give up benefits wrongfully obtained. Liability for restitution is primarily governed by the "principle of unjust enrichment": A person who has been unjustly enriched at the expense of another is required to make restitution.
In business and accounting, net income is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and amortization, interest, and taxes for an accounting period.
In the United States income tax system, adjusted gross income (AGI) is an individual's total gross income minus specific deductions. It is used to calculate taxable income, which is AGI minus allowances for personal exemptions and itemized deductions. For most individual tax purposes, AGI is more relevant than gross income.
A legal remedy, also referred to as judicial relief or a judicial remedy, is the means with which a court of law, usually in the exercise of civil law jurisdiction, enforces a right, imposes a penalty, or makes another court order to impose its will in order to compensate for the harm of a wrongful act inflicted upon an individual.
Returns, in economics and political economy, are the distributions or payments awarded to the various suppliers of a good or service
In finance, return is a profit on an investment. It comprises any change in value of the investment, and/or cash flows which the investor receives from that investment over a specified time period, such as interest payments, coupons, cash dividends and stock dividends. It may be measured either in absolute terms or as a percentage of the amount invested. The latter is also called the holding period return.
Equitable remedies are judicial remedies developed by courts of equity from about the time of Henry VIII to provide more flexible responses to changing social conditions than was possible in precedent-based common law.
An adequate remedy or adequate remedy at law is part of a legal remedy which the court deems satisfactory, without recourse to an equitable remedy This consideration expresses to the court whether money should be awarded or a court order should be decreed.. Adequate remedy at law refers to the sufficient compensation for the loss or damages caused by the defendant with a proper monetary award. The court must grant the adequacy of remedy that will lead to a "meaningful hearing". Whether legal damages or equitable relief are requested depends largely on,whether or not the remedy can be valued. Both two elements, compensation and the meaningfulness of hearing, provide a proper way to have an adequate remedy. The word "meaningfulness" of hearing in the law process is the assumption that the defendant compensated must be meaningful for the injured party where the defendant made a fully covered compensation for all the losses. Hence, the hearing in which cannot give any right amount of compensation award or settlement is not "meaningful", and the unavailability of the compensation will lead to an inadequate remedy. The adequate remedy at law is the legal remedies by meaning it is satisfactory compensation by way of monetary damages without granting equitable remedies.
Damage waiver(DW) or, as it is often referred to, collision damage waiver (CDW) or loss damage waiver (LDW) is a term that can be included or purchased as an option in a car rental agreement, by which the rental company waives the right to pursue compensation from the renter if the vehicle is damaged or stolen. Although it involves a transfer of risk, a damage waiver option is not insurance but instead a modification to the basic rental contract.
Expectation damages are damages recoverable from a breach of contract by the non-breaching party. An award of expectation damages protects the injured party's interest in realising the value of the expectancy that was created by the promise of the other party. Thus, the impact of the breach on the promisee is to be effectively "undone" with the award of expectation damages.
Disgorgement is the act of giving up something on demand or by legal compulsion, for example giving up profits that were obtained illegally.
Loss of use is the inability, due to a tort or other injury to use a body part, animal, equipment, premises, or other property. Law.com defines it as "the inability to use an automobile, premises or some equipment due to damage to the vehicle, premises or articles caused by the negligence or other wrongdoing of another."
Conversion is an intentional tort consisting of "taking with the intent of exercising over the chattel an ownership inconsistent with the real owner's right of possession". In England and Wales, it is a tort of strict liability. Its equivalents in criminal law include larceny or theft and criminal conversion. In those jurisdictions that recognise it, criminal conversion is a lesser crime than theft/larceny.
Royscot Trust Ltd v Rogerson[1991] EWCA Civ 12 is an English contract law case on misrepresentation. It examines the Misrepresentation Act 1967 and addresses the extent of damages available under s 2(1) for negligent misrepresentation.
Attorney General v Blake[2000] UKHL 45, [2001] 1 AC 268 is a leading English contract law case on damages for breach of contract. It established that in some circumstances, where ordinary remedies are inadequate, restitutionary damages may be awarded.
Diminished value or diminution in value are the terms generally used to describe the loss in a property's market value after it was damaged in an accident and repaired. Diminished value is most often associated with automobiles but it is applicable to other property of value including real estate or collectibles such as jewelry and artwork. If a property was damaged and repair failed to restore it to its original market value then said property has suffered diminished value.
Ajaxo Inc. v. E*Trade Financial Corp., 187 Cal.App.4th 1295 (2010), is the second appeal on a dispute dated back to 1999. During the original 2000 case, defendant E*Trade, an online financial services company, was found liable for maliciously and willfully misappropriating trade secrets pertaining to wireless stock trading technology acquired from the plaintiff, Ajaxo. Under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act E*Trade was required under a mutually signed Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to keep Ajaxo's trade secrets confidential. After a jury trial in 2003, E*Trade was fined $1.3 million to be paid to Ajaxo for the misappropriation and breach of NDA. The court denied Ajaxo's request for additional damages. All parties appealed. In 2005 the California courts of appeal affirmed the original ruling but remanded the case back to the trial court to determine additional damages. A jury verdict in 2008 rejected claims raised and demands for royalty damages from Ajaxo. In trade secret cases it is common for a plaintiff to seek royalty damages when they are unable to show an actual loss or that the defendant received some inequitable benefit from the misappropriation. In this case the court refused to allow evidence of royalty damages, claiming there were no net damages. Ajaxo appealed. In 2010 the California courts of appeal once again remanded the case back to the trial court reasoning that in such cases an exact quantitative measure of wrongful enrichment damages incurred by the plaintiff might not be sufficient to reject the claim of reasonable royalties based damages