What Is Mitigation of Damages

Mitigation of damages is a legal concept that requires the harmed party to minimize the amount of their damages.

So in other words, if you as a harmed party in a car wreck case, you have a responsibility to make sure that your damages don’t become excessive. A great example of that is after a car wreck, your car has been moved to a storage lot and it’s drawing storage fees, thirty, forty dollars a day.

You have a duty to minimize how much those ultimate storage fees are. And you can’t just let your car sit there for two months, without getting without that part of it getting dealt with. If there’s a dispute between you and the insurance company about who’s gotta pay your damages in a in a car wreck case, you may be responsible to go ahead and move that car, get it out of the storage lot, and move it to a place until that that dispute is resolved. Because if you let the car sit there for thirty days or sixty days, you have failed in your duty to mitigate your damages.