“Failure to mitigate damages” – what does it mean for an injured person?

When a person is injured due to the negligence of another, the defense almost always claims the injured person “failed to mitigate their damages.” So what does this mean?

“Mitigation of damages” means that an injured person has the duty to minimize their damages after being injured by the defendant. To do so, they must “exercise reasonable diligence and ordinary care in attempting to minimize his damages after injury has been inflicted.” If they don’t, the defendant is not legally responsible for any damages suffered by the plaintiff that are “proximately caused,” or attributable to, the injured person’s failure to mitigate.

But the duty to mitigate is not absolute; it only requires that an injured person do what is “reasonable under the circumstances.” For example, if an injured person is presented with multiple options to minimize their injuries, they may choose to pursue any of the options that are reasonable. The law does not punish a person for picking a reasonable option that later turned out not to work, or not to be as effective as another option might have been.

In other words: