The failure to instruct regarding nominal damages altered the jury's special damages verdict and deprived Zok of the valuable right of full vindication for his unlawful arrest. Recovery of nominal damages is important not for the amount of the award but for the fact of the award. In this situation, the finding of liability, without an award of the nominal damages to which Zok was entitled as a matter of law was a fundamentally incomplete remedy for the particular tort Zok suffered. Thus, the failure to give a nominal damages instruction constitutes plain error. We must therefore review the failure to instruct to determine whether a new trial is necessary.
Nominal damages are by definition minimal monetary damages.
Consequently, the jury could not properly have returned a large nominal damages award for Zok.5 Rather, nominal damages are usually one cent or one dollar. Thus, had the jury been instructed that Zok was entitled to nominal damages, it could have awarded him only a nominal amount, e.g., one dollar. It is generally recognized that because of the inconsequential monetary value of nominal damages, an appellate court will not reverse a judgment merely for the purpose of permitting the recovery of nominal damages. In this case, the trial court granted summary judgment to the officers on the issue of punitive damages and attorney's fees are not at issue. Thus, the failure to instruct regarding nominal damages did not cause Zok to suffer a substantive monetary loss.