Walmart Stores East, Lp v. Leverette

321 Ga. 854

FINAL COPY S24G1104. WALMART STORES EAST, LP v. LEVERETTE. PINSON, Justice. At common law, juries would routinely award “nominal dam- ages” to a plaintiff who proved the violation of her legal rights but failed to prove any amount of actual damages with enough certainty. These nominal damages were widely understood to be only a “trivial sum,” important for the fact of the award but not meaningful as an amount. In England, that sum was often a shilling (equivalent to 12 pennies), and after nominal damages traveled across the Atlantic, that sum was first a few pennies, and later,…