§ 25-21,185.08.Civil actions to which contributory negligence is a defense; terms, defined.

Section 25-21,185.08 supplies the vocabulary the rest of Nebraska’s comparative negligence sections depend on. A claimant is any person who brings or maintains an action described in section 25-21,185.07. When an estate brings the action, the claimant is the decedent; when a minor’s action is brought on the minor’s behalf, the claimant is the minor. That framing keeps the comparative-fault analysis focused on the injured person’s own conduct, even when someone else formally files the case.

The section then splits recoverable harm into two categories. Economic damages are monetary losses: medical expenses, lost earnings and earning capacity, funeral costs, loss of use of property, repair or replacement costs, the cost of substitute domestic services, lost employment, and lost business or employment opportunities are all listed as examples, though the definition is not limited to that list. Noneconomic damages are subjective, nonmonetary losses — pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental suffering, emotional distress, loss of society and companionship, loss of consortium, injury to reputation, and humiliation among them — and the definition specifically excludes economic damages from this category.

That economic and noneconomic split is not just descriptive. Section 25-21,185.10 treats the two categories differently when more than one defendant is involved, so how a particular loss is classified under this section can determine whether a defendant’s liability for it is joint and several or several only.