Damage caps in injury cases in Hawaii

If you were just hurt in a crash in Hawaii and someone told you the state "caps" what you can recover, here is the reassuring part: for an ordinary car accident, it doesn't. Hawaii does cap one kind of damages, but the legislature specifically carved motor vehicle accidents out of it. So after a wreck, the question that actually matters is how much you can collect, and that turns on several things other than a cap.

The one cap Hawaii has

Hawaii law limits "pain and suffering" damages to a maximum of $375,000.¹ That is the number people find when they search, and it is real. Section 663-8.7 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes says damages for pain and suffering "shall be limited to a maximum award of $375,000."¹

Two details make that cap far narrower than it sounds. First, "pain and suffering" is a defined and fairly small category. Hawaii law defines it as the actual physical pain and suffering that results from a physical injury.² The broader group of "noneconomic damages," which includes mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium, is defined separately, and those items were never inside the $375,000 limit to begin with.²

Second, and this is the part that matters most for crash victims, the cap does not apply to car accidents. Section 663-8.7 says its limit "shall not apply to tort actions enumerated in section 663-10.9(2)."¹ Read that cross-referenced list and motor vehicle accident torts are on it, alongside intentional torts, products liability, and a few others.³ The practical result: if your claim comes out of a motor vehicle collision, the $375,000 pain-and-suffering cap is not a ceiling on your case.¹³

What Hawaii never caps

No Hawaii statute caps economic damages in a personal injury case. Your medical bills, the cost of future care, lost wages, lost earning capacity, and vehicle-related losses are all recoverable in full, limited only by what you can prove. Economic and noneconomic damages are treated as separate categories under state law, and there is no dollar ceiling on economic recovery.²

Punitive damages also have no statutory dollar cap in Hawaii. They are governed instead by a court-made standard. In Masaki v. General Motors Corp., the Hawaii Supreme Court held that a plaintiff must prove entitlement to punitive damages by clear and convincing evidence, and must show the defendant acted wantonly or oppressively, or with a conscious indifference to the consequences.⁴ That is a high bar. In a typical rear-end collision you will not see punitive damages, but in a case involving a drunk driver or similarly reckless conduct they can be on the table, and when they are, no statute limits the amount.⁴

The limits that actually shrink a Hawaii recovery

Because there is no cap on a car-crash claim, the things that really determine your recovery are structural. Three of them do the work a cap otherwise would.

No-fault decides whether you can claim pain and suffering at all

Hawaii is a no-fault state. Every auto policy has to carry personal injury protection (PIP), with a minimum of $10,000 per person, and PIP pays your medical costs regardless of who caused the crash.⁵ The trade-off is that you cannot sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering unless your injury clears a threshold. Under section 431:10C-306, you can step outside no-fault and bring that claim only if the crash caused death, a significant permanent loss of use of a part or function of the body, a permanent and serious disfigurement, or if your PIP benefits reach $5,000.⁶ So Hawaii doesn't cap pain-and-suffering damages in a car case, but it does put a gate in front of them.⁶

Your share of the fault comes off the top

Hawaii uses modified comparative negligence. You can still recover if you were partly to blame, as long as your negligence "was not greater than" the negligence of the people you are suing.⁷ Reach 51 percent and you recover nothing.⁷ Below that line, your award is reduced in proportion to your own fault. If a jury values your case at $200,000 and finds you 20 percent responsible, you collect $160,000. This reduction isn't a statutory cap, though it can move the final number just as much.

The at-fault driver's coverage is the practical ceiling

A judgment is only worth what you can collect, and the at-fault driver's insurance limits are, in real life, the ceiling on most claims. Hawaii's minimum liability limits rose on January 1, 2026, when Act 138 of 2024 took effect, to $40,000 per person and $80,000 per accident for bodily injury, plus $20,000 for property damage, up from the old 20/40/10.⁸ Plenty of drivers carry only the minimum. If your damages run past the other driver's policy, the gap gets filled by your own underinsured motorist coverage, if you bought it, or it goes uncollected. This is why serious cases turn on finding every available policy, and why it can help to talk with an attorney who does this work. You can find one through the legal directory.

If your car itself lost value because of the crash, that is a separate economic claim with its own rules, covered on the Hawaii diminished value page.

One hard deadline that works like a cap

There is one true ceiling in every Hawaii injury case, and it is on time, not money. You have two years from the date of the crash to file suit for injury or property damage under section 657-7.⁹ Miss it and the claim is barred no matter how strong it is, which is the harshest limit of all. That same two-year window covers both your injury claim and your vehicle damage claim.⁹

If you need the official crash report to support your claim, you can request it through the Hawaii crash reports page.

The bottom line for a Hawaii crash

The $375,000 figure you may have read about is a cap on pain and suffering that Hawaii law expressly does not apply to motor vehicle accidents.¹³ For a car crash, both your economic damages and your pain-and-suffering damages are uncapped, and even punitive damages have no statutory limit.⁴ What shapes your recovery instead is whether you clear the no-fault threshold,⁶ how fault gets divided,⁷ how much insurance is actually available,⁸ and whether you file within two years.⁹ Those are the numbers worth knowing.

This is general information about Hawaii law, not legal advice about your situation.

Sources

Hawaii Revised Statutes § 663-8.7, Limitation on pain and suffering. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol13_Ch0601-0676/HRS0663/HRS_0663-0008_0007.htm
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 663-8.5, Noneconomic and economic damages defined. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol13_Ch0601-0676/HRS0663/HRS_0663-0008_0005.htm
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 663-10.9, Exceptions to the abolition of joint and several liability. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol13_Ch0601-0676/HRS0663/HRS_0663-0010_0009.htm
Masaki v. General Motors Corp., 71 Haw. 1, 780 P.2d 566 (1989). https://law.justia.com/cases/hawaii/supreme-court/1989/13023-2.html
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 431:10C-103.5, Personal injury protection benefits. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol09_Ch0431-0435H/HRS0431/HRS_0431-0010C-0103_0005.htm
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 431:10C-306, Abolition of tort liability. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol09_Ch0431-0435H/HRS0431/HRS_0431-0010C-0306.htm
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 663-31, Comparative negligence. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol13_Ch0601-0676/HRS0663/HRS_0663-0031.htm
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 431:10C-301, Required motor vehicle insurance coverage, as amended by 2024 Haw. Sess. Laws Act 138. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol09_Ch0431-0435H/HRS0431/HRS_0431-0010C-0301.htm
Hawaii Revised Statutes § 657-7, Damage to persons or property. https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol13_Ch0601-0676/HRS0657/HRS_0657-0007.htm

Damage Caps in Injury Cases in Hawaii