In a way, potentially. If you get hurt by someone who was acting with gross negligence, you will not recover more in compensatory damages. However, you may be entitled to punitive damages, if the defendant’s conduct was extremely egregious. You may also avoid statutory damage caps that would have limited your recovery, had the defendant acted with ordinary negligence. Your compensatory damages are losses that you sustained due to the defendant’s conduct. They include compensation for your: medical bills, including anticipated future medical expenses, lost wages, including your lost earning capacity or ability to make money in the future, property damage, pain and suffering, and loss of consortium. The amount of these damages, however, does not change based on whether the person who hurt you was acting negligently or with gross negligence. Therefore, the compensation that you need to cover these losses does not change, either. However, if the defendant’s conduct was sufficiently abysmal, you may be entitled to punitive damages. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for egregiously poor conduct and to deter similar conduct by others in the future. Punitive damages are rarely awarded in cases based on negligence, though, even if the negligence was extreme enough to be gross negligence. If the defendant acted with gross negligence, rather than ordinary negligence, he or she may also lose the protection of a statutory damage cap. These damage caps are especially common in medical malpractice cases. They limit how much compensation victims can recover. For example, Colorado has a damage cap that limits victims of medical malpractice to: $1,000,000 in economic damages, like medical bills and lost income, and $300,000 in non-economic damages, like pain and suffering. State law may waive the damage cap if the defendant acted with gross negligence, rather than with ordinary negligence. The damage caps also generally only limit economic or non-economic compensation, but not punitive damages. A judge or jury may use an award of punitive damages to get around a restrictive damage cap to adequately compensate the victim and punish the defendant.