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Will the person who caused my injury get punished?
No. Punishment comes from criminal cases, not civil cases. Defendants in civil
actions for personal injury do not receive jail terms or stiff fines as punishment. Those are
criminal sentences and personal injury cases are civil disputes. But juries and courts can
award what the law calls punitive damages when the defendant's intentional acts have
injured you. These awards are rather rare. Courts use them to punish people (and more
often large corporations) who have behaved recklessly or against the public's interest.
Courts also hope that ordering the payment of punitive damages will discourage such
defendants from engaging in the same kind of harmful behavior in the future.
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