Back To Basics On Betterment: A Primer On Recent Judicial Decisions Pertaining To The Issue Of Betterment

The long established principle applicable to damages in tort actions is best captured by the Latin maxim restitutio ad integrum, which means that the damages shall be such as will, so far as money can, put the plaintiff in the same position as he would have been had the tort not occurred. Unfortunately, when dealing with a situation where a tortious act leads to damage of real property, the courts have had difficulty calculating how in fact a plaintiff should be compensated for their loss to coincide with the above maxim.

Where real property is damaged, the normal measure of damages is the diminution in value. This is typically described as the 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.