Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-968_8nj9.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

The  dissent  discounts  Justice  Story’s  statement,  saying 
that he took a potentially contradictory position elsewhere 
and asserted that both actual damages and a violation of a 
legal right are required.  Post, at 7–8 (opinion of ROBERTS, 
C. J.).  But  in  the  same  source  the  dissent  cites,  Justice 
Story said that nominal damages are “presumed” “[w]here
the breach of duty is clear.”  Commentaries on the Law of 
Agency §217, p. 211 (1839).  Justice Story adopted the same
position a few years later.  Whipple v. Cumberland Mfg. Co., 
29 F. Cas. 934, 936 (No. 17,516) (CC Me. 1843) (stating that 
it is “well-known and well-settled” that “wherever a wrong 
is done to a right,” at minimum “nominal damages will be 
given”).  And other jurists declared that “[t]he principle that
every injury legally imports damage, was decisively settled,
in the case of Ashby.”  Parker v. Griswold, 17 Conn. *288, 
*304–*306  (1845)  (citing  many  cases  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic,  including  Webb  and  Marzetti).    This  history  is  
hardly one of “indeterminate sources.”  Post, at 8. 

Admittedly, the rule allowing nominal damages for a vio-
lation of any legal right, though “decisively settled,” Parker, 
17 Conn., at *304, was not universally followed—as is true
for most common-law doctrines.  And some courts only fol-
lowed the rule in part, recognizing the availability of nomi-
nal damages but holding that the improper denial of nomi-
nal  damages  could  be  harmless  error.  Yet,  even  among 
these courts, many adopted the rule in full whenever a per-
son  proved  that  there  was  a  violation  of  an  “important
right.”  E.g., Hecht v. Harrison, 5 Wyo. 279, 290, 40 P. 306, 
309–310 (1895); accord, Reid v. Johnson, 132 Ind. 416, 419, 
31 N. E. 1107, 1108 (1892) (“substantial right”).  Nonethe-
less, the prevailing rule, “well established” at common law, 
was “that a party whose rights are invaded can always re-
cover nominal damages without furnishing any evidence of
actual damage.”  1 T.  Sedgwick,  Measure of Damages  71, 
n. a  (7th  ed.  1880);  see  also  id.,  at  72  (citing  Lord  Holt’s 
opinion in Ashby).