A per quod claim in New Jersey is a lawsuit brought by the legal spouse, civil union partner, or registered domestic partner of someone who was physically injured by another person’s negligence, seeking compensation for the companionship, household help, and intimacy the uninjured partner has lost as a result.1Justia. Tornquist v. Perkowski Lawyers often call it a loss of consortium claim. It attaches to the injured person’s personal injury lawsuit and shares that lawsuit’s fate, which is why the procedural rules around it matter as much as the loss itself.
Who Can Bring One
Standing is narrow. You must have a formal legal relationship with the injured person at the time of the accident: a marriage, a civil union, or a registered domestic partnership. New Jersey’s Civil Union Act gives civil union partners the same rights as married spouses, and the legislature specifically listed loss of consortium among the causes of action available to them.2Justia. New Jersey Code 37-1-31 – Legal Benefits, Protections, Responsibilities of Civil Union Couples Equal to Those of Married Couples3New Jersey Legislature. P.L. 2006, c.103
Unmarried partners have no standing, no matter how long they have been together. A boyfriend, girlfriend, or fiancé cannot bring the claim. Marrying the injured person after the accident does not create standing either; the relationship has to exist when the injury happens.
What You Can Recover
Per quod damages fall into three recognized categories, and together they cover the practical, emotional, and intimate dimensions of what the injury has taken from the partnership.
- Loss of services. The day-to-day work the injured partner can no longer do: cooking, cleaning, yard work, driving the kids, managing finances. If you have had to hire someone to cover these tasks, those receipts help prove the loss.
- Loss of society. The companionship, comfort, shared activities, and conversation that made up the relationship. A spouse who used to hike, travel, or simply share dinner with their partner and now cannot has suffered a real loss, even without a receipt to attach to it.
- Loss of consortium. The loss of physical intimacy and sexual relations, treated as a distinct category because serious injury can fundamentally change the intimate bond between partners.4Justia. Tornquist v. Perkowski – Section: The Definition and Characteristics of a Per Quod Claim
New Jersey does not cap per quod damages by statute. What a jury awards depends on the severity of the injury, the evidence of how the relationship actually changed, and the expected duration of the limitations.
Why Your Claim Depends on Your Partner’s Case
A per quod claim is derivative, not independent. It rides on the injured partner’s personal injury case, and the New Jersey Supreme Court has said plainly that the per quod claim can never rise higher than the direct claim arising from the accident.5vLex. Morrone v. Thuring – Section: The Per Quod Claim If the injured spouse loses, the per quod claim loses with it.
Fault allocation flows through too. Under New Jersey’s comparative negligence rule, an injured plaintiff who is more than 50% at fault for the accident recovers nothing.6Justia. New Jersey Revised Statutes Section 2A-15-5.1 If that happens, the per quod claim is wiped out. If the injured spouse carries some fault below that threshold, the per quod award is reduced by the same percentage. A $100,000 per quod claim becomes $70,000 when the injured spouse is 30% at fault.
The dependency has one more consequence that catches people off guard. When the injured person’s recovery is subject to liens from Medicaid, a health insurer, or another party, those liens can reach the per quod award too. New Jersey courts have treated the two awards as having a “substantial unity” because both will realistically go toward covering the injured person’s expenses.5vLex. Morrone v. Thuring – Section: The Per Quod Claim The net amount a per quod claimant takes home can shrink considerably after liens are paid.
Divorce or legal separation during the lawsuit damages the claim too. The per quod theory rests on an ongoing partnership that is being harmed. No consortium damages cover periods after a divorce is final. Couples with pending injury litigation should know this before making decisions about the marriage.
How Long You Have to File
New Jersey’s general statute of limitations for personal injury is two years from the date of the injury.7Justia. New Jersey Revised Statutes Section 2A-14-2 The per quod claim carries its own two-year clock that does not always start on the same day as the injured person’s clock; when the effect on the relationship emerges gradually, the per quod clock may begin later.1Justia. Tornquist v. Perkowski
Even so, the practical answer is to file both claims together at the start. New Jersey courts expect the per quod claim to be joined with the injured person’s lawsuit, with the spouse named as a co-plaintiff in the original complaint.1Justia. Tornquist v. Perkowski Trying to add the claim later, or file it as a separate suit, risks dismissal under the rule that requires related claims to be brought in a single action.
The Verbal Threshold Problem in Car Accident Cases
Car accident per quod claims run into a hurdle no other type of case has. New Jersey drivers choose between two auto insurance options: the zero threshold (full right to sue) and the limitation on lawsuit option, known as the verbal threshold. The verbal threshold is cheaper and common.
If the injured spouse chose the verbal threshold, they can recover non-economic damages like pain and suffering only when their injury fits one of six categories: death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement or scarring, a displaced fracture, loss of a fetus, or a permanent injury that will not heal to normal function with further treatment.8Justia. New Jersey Revised Statutes Section 39-6A-8 If the injured partner cannot clear that threshold, their non-economic damages are blocked, and because the per quod claim is derivative, it is blocked too. This is the usual outcome in soft-tissue injury cases. Find out early which option the injured spouse carried.
If the Injury Happened at Work
New Jersey’s Workers’ Compensation Act gives injured workers benefits in exchange for giving up the right to sue their employer. That trade-off binds the worker’s “surviving spouse and next of kin” as well, which effectively bars a per quod claim against the employer for a workplace injury.9New Jersey Department of Labor. Workers’ Compensation Law
There is a path when a third party contributed to the injury. If defective equipment caused the harm, the injured worker can sue the manufacturer, and the per quod claim rides along on that third-party lawsuit. The workers’ comp bar protects the employer and co-employees acting within the scope of their work; it does not shield outside parties.
What to Expect Once You File
You will participate fully in discovery. That means answering written questions about how the injury has changed your household and your relationship, and sitting for a deposition where defense attorneys will ask pointed questions about your life before and after the accident. Topics include household responsibilities, social activities, emotional changes, and intimacy. Expect the defense to probe for signs the relationship was already strained or that the losses are overstated.
Have your proof of standing ready: a marriage certificate, civil union certificate, or domestic partnership registration. Without it, the court will not reach the merits.
At trial, specifics win. “Our relationship suffered” lands flat. Testimony that you used to cook together every night and now eat separately because your spouse cannot stand long enough to help, or that you canceled a long-planned trip, gives a jury something to picture. Payments for housekeeping, childcare, or lawn services that your partner used to handle help quantify the loss of services. Medical records tying physical limitations to those lost activities connect the pieces. Social media posts showing the couple at events or on vacation can cut the other way quickly.
Taxes on a Per Quod Recovery
Federal tax law excludes from income damages received on account of personal physical injuries or physical sickness.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 104 – Compensation for Injuries or Sickness Because a per quod claim is derivative of a physical injury, the recovery generally falls within that exclusion. The exceptions are any portion allocated to punitive damages or to purely emotional distress unconnected to a physical injury, which are taxable. When you settle, the way the settlement agreement characterizes the per quod portion matters; a clear allocation tying it to the physical-injury-derived consortium loss helps preserve the tax exclusion.