If an officer intentionally fails to keep someone safe, what damages are typically involved?

• A. Compensatory damages
• B. Punitive damages
• C. Nominal damages
• D. General damages

Answer: (A)

When someone is harmed because another party fails to keep them safe, the remedy is meant to make them whole by covering actual losses. Compensatory damages are designed to do this, addressing both economic costs (like medical bills and lost wages) and non-economic harms (such as pain and suffering) resulting from the incident. They reflect the real impact of what happened.

Punitive damages, while possible if the conduct was especially malicious or reckless, are not the typical award in most cases of failure to protect someone. Nominal damages are only for situations where there’s a legal violation but no actual injury, so they don’t fit a scenario with proven harm. General damages refer to non-economic harms and are usually encompassed within compensatory damages rather than treated as a separate category. So the standard damages in this situation are compensatory damages.