A broken contract has a price. Courts call it expectation damages: the money needed to put you where you would stand if the promise had been kept.
You should know that expectation damages belong to contract law, and injury cases follow different rules. This article covers both, so you can tell which track fits your situation.
How do expectation damages work?
A contract is a promise the law will enforce. Break it, and the other side can sue for the benefit of the bargain. That benefit is the expectation.
Take a simple example. You pay a contractor $20,000 to finish a renovation. He quits. Finishing the work with someone else costs $28,000. Your expectation damages are the $8,000 difference. The law converts the deal you were promised into dollars.
The formula is plain. What you were promised, minus what you actually received. New York courts use this measure in business disputes, construction contracts, insurance disputes, and employment agreements.
How are expectation damages different from other contract damages?
Contract law offers several measures. The facts decide which one fits.
Reliance damages return what you spent performing your side. If you paid $5,000 in deposits before the other party backed out, reliance damages recover that money. Incidental damages cover the direct costs of handling the breach, such as hiring a replacement vendor fast. Consequential damages reach losses that flow less directly, like profits lost when a supplier fails to deliver. New York courts allow consequential damages only if both parties could reasonably foresee that kind of loss at the time of contracting.
Expectation damages are the default. The other measures step in when the expectation is hard to prove or misses part of the loss.
Do expectation damages apply to personal injury cases?
No. This is the key correction. A personal injury claim sounds in tort, not contract. Nobody promised you an outcome before a crash or a fall. There is no bargain to measure.
Injury damages in New York are compensatory. They cover what the injury took: medical bills, lost earnings, future treatment, and pain and suffering. Proof comes through medical records, wage records, and expert testimony. We walk through that framework in how damages are calculated in personal injury cases.
Car accident cases add rules under Insurance Law Article 51. No-fault coverage pays up to $50,000 in basic economic loss. You must file the no-fault application within 30 days of the crash. To recover pain and suffering, your injury must meet the serious injury threshold under Insurance Law § 5102(d). For actions started on or after May 26, 2026, the categories include fracture, significant disfigurement, and permanent or significant limitation of a body function, among others. The former 90/180-day category was repealed and no longer applies to new actions.
Where do contract ideas show up in an injury case?
Insurance is where the two fields meet. Every policy is a contract. A carrier that refuses to pay a covered claim has breached it, and the policyholder can sue on the contract. Uninsured motorist coverage, SUM coverage, and no-fault benefits all rest on policy language.
That makes your own policy worth reading after a crash. The coverage you bought defines the promises the carrier must keep. A lawyer reviewing a car accident case checks every applicable policy: the at-fault driver's liability coverage, the policy on the vehicle you occupied, and your own household coverage.
Drivers should also know one current-law point. Under CPLR § 1411, in motor vehicle cases started on or after May 26, 2026, you cannot recover if your share of fault exceeds the combined fault of the parties you sue. Fault allocation is now a threshold question, not just a discount on the award.
What deadlines apply?
Contract claims in New York generally carry a six-year statute of limitations under CPLR § 213. Personal injury claims generally must be started within three years under CPLR § 214. Wrongful death claims run two years. Claims against a city or county require a Notice of Claim within 90 days under General Municipal Law § 50-e.
Contracts can shorten these clocks. Many insurance policies set their own notice rules. A 90-day deadline applies to certain uninsured motorist filings. Miss one, and a valid claim can die before it starts. If someone told you the paperwork can wait, or that you do not need counsel yet, read what that advice can cost.
How Schwartzapfel Holbrook approaches damages
Damages are proven, not assumed. In an injury case, that means building the medical record, documenting lost earnings, and projecting future costs with qualified experts. In the insurance disputes inside many injury cases, it means holding carriers to the contracts they wrote.
Schwartzapfel Holbrook accepts a limited number of serious injury cases across New York City, Long Island, Nassau County, and Suffolk County. Every case we take is prepared as if it will be tried. That preparation is what makes the other side take the damages number seriously.
