VA · jury_instructions
Va. Model Jury Instr. Civ. No. 45.550
Damages: Duty to Mitigate
The plaintiff had a duty to minimize their damages. If you find that the plaintiff did not act
reasonably to minimize their damages and, as a result, the damages were greater than if they had
acted to minimize them, then the plaintiff cannot recover the amount by which the damages were
increased. The duty to minimize damages begins when the plaintiff knew, or should have known, of
the breach of the contract.
The burden is on the defendant to prove by the greater weight of the evidence that the plaintiff
failed to minimize their damages and to prove by the greater weight of the evidence the amount
by which they were increased as a result.
History
Virginia Model Jury Instructions – Civil, Release 26, April 2026. The unannotated set, posted by the Supreme Court of Virginia at vacourts.gov; the book states that it is made available with the permission of the publisher, Matthew Bender & Company, Inc.
Provenance
- Source
- vacourts.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-11
- Edition
- civ-2026-04-01
- Content hash
b7012e0052ccf6b47e15d76f3f26ec85973ae9c94ceb3bee64104eb9836d61d0
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