You can sue someone for a wide range of harms: a broken contract, an injury caused by carelessness or on purpose, damage to your property, a false statement that wrecked your reputation, workplace discrimination or wrongful firing, fraud, and misuse of a position of trust. What can you sue someone for in practice comes down to the same basic showing in almost every case. You have to prove the other side owed you a legal duty, failed to meet it, and caused you real, measurable harm. The type of claim decides what proof you need and what the court can order, and nearly every claim carries a filing deadline that can wipe out an otherwise strong case if you miss it.
Broken Contracts
A valid contract needs an offer, acceptance, something of value exchanged, legal capacity on both sides, and a lawful purpose.1Legal Information Institute. Contract Once those pieces are in place, the agreement is binding whether it was written, spoken, or implied by how the parties behaved.
To win a breach of contract claim, you need four things: a valid contract, your own performance of your side of the deal, the other party’s failure to perform, and financial harm because of that failure. A contractor who walks off a renovation halfway through leaves the homeowner free to sue for the cost of hiring someone else to finish, plus damage from the delay.
One rule catches people off guard. After a breach, you have a duty to limit your own losses. Courts call this mitigation. A landlord whose tenant breaks a lease cannot leave the unit empty for months and then sue for every unpaid month; the landlord has to make a reasonable effort to find a replacement. Fail to mitigate, and a court can cut your recovery by whatever you could have avoided.
Personal Injury
When someone’s carelessness or recklessness injures you, a personal injury suit lets you recover medical bills, lost income, pain, and other losses. The usual legal theory is negligence.
Proving Negligence
Negligence has four elements: the defendant owed you a duty of care, breached that duty, caused your injury through the breach, and left you with actual harm.2Legal Information Institute. Negligence A driver who runs a red light owes a duty to follow traffic laws, breaches it, and directly causes whatever injuries and vehicle damage follow. A property owner who ignores a broken staircase railing owes the same kind of duty to anyone lawfully on the premises.
Medical malpractice is negligence by a healthcare provider. These cases turn on whether the provider deviated from the standard of care a competent professional in the same specialty would follow. The standard is technical, so an expert witness is almost always required, and many states add procedural hurdles like pre-suit review panels or certificates of merit before you can even file.
Wrongful Death
When someone’s negligence or intentional act kills another person, surviving family members can bring a wrongful death suit. State statutes govern who can sue and what damages are available, but spouses, children, and sometimes parents or other dependents can usually recover funeral costs, lost financial support, and loss of companionship.3Legal Information Institute. Wrongful Death
When You Share Some of the Fault
Your own role in what happened can shrink or wipe out your recovery, depending on the state. Most states use comparative negligence, which reduces your award by your share of fault. A jury that finds you 20 percent responsible for a $100,000 accident will award you $80,000. Many of these states use a modified version that bars recovery entirely once your fault passes 50 or 51 percent. A handful use pure comparative negligence, which allows a recovery even at 99 percent fault, though the award shrinks accordingly. A small number of states still follow contributory negligence, an all-or-nothing rule that blocks any recovery if you were even slightly at fault.
Intentional Harm
You don’t have to wait for a criminal prosecution to sue someone who hurt you on purpose. Civil claims for intentional torts exist independently of criminal charges, and the burden of proof is lower. You only need to prove your case by a preponderance of the evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
Civil assault and battery cover intentional harmful contact or putting someone in reasonable fear of it. A bar fight, a road-rage attack, or domestic violence can all support a lawsuit for medical costs, lost wages, and emotional distress, whether or not the attacker is ever charged.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress covers conduct so extreme and outrageous that it causes severe psychological harm. The bar is deliberately high. Ordinary insults, rudeness, and even genuinely hurtful behavior don’t qualify. The conduct must go beyond all bounds of decency, and the distress has to be serious enough that no reasonable person should be expected to endure it.4Legal Information Institute. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress Courts are skeptical of these claims because the standard is subjective, so documented psychological treatment and concrete evidence of impact matter.
Property Damage
When someone damages or destroys your property, by carelessness or on purpose, you can sue to recover the cost of repair or replacement. These claims cover real estate, vehicles, personal belongings, and anything else you own. A neighbor who ignores a dying tree that falls on your garage, a driver who totals your parked car, or a vandal who spray-paints your fence all create grounds to sue.
The difference between a repair case and a total-loss case shapes what you can recover. A scratched car or a broken fence panel gets you repair costs. Property taken or destroyed so completely that repair is impractical is treated as a forced sale, and you can recover the full value of the item. This matters when property is stolen, sold off to someone else, or damaged past the point of fixing.
Defamation
A defamation suit lets you recover damages when someone makes a false statement of fact that harms your reputation. Written defamation is libel; spoken defamation is slander. To win, you have to prove the defendant made a false statement of fact, communicated it to at least one other person, acted with at least negligence as to its truth, and caused real harm to your reputation.5Legal Information Institute. Wex – Defamation
Opinions aren’t defamation, no matter how harsh. The statement has to be something that can be proven true or false. “That contractor is terrible” is opinion. “That contractor got sued for stealing client funds,” said about someone who never was, is a false statement of fact.
Who you are changes the burden. Public officials and public figures have to prove the defendant acted with actual malice, meaning they knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was true. Private individuals generally only need to show the defendant was negligent about the statement’s accuracy.
Employment Claims
Workplace disputes drive a large share of civil litigation. The two most common categories are discrimination and wrongful termination, and they often overlap.
Discrimination
Federal law prohibits employers from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.6EEOC. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Other federal statutes extend protections to age, disability, pregnancy, and genetic information. Discrimination can show up in hiring and firing, pay, promotions, harassment, or any other adverse action tied to a protected characteristic.
Before you can file a federal employment discrimination lawsuit, you have to file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.7EEOC. Filing A Charge of Discrimination That step has its own tight deadlines, and skipping it can permanently bar your suit. The EEOC investigates and may try to resolve the charge. If it doesn’t, the agency issues a right-to-sue letter that lets you go to court.
Wrongful Termination
Most employment in the United States is at-will. Either side can end the relationship for any reason or no reason. There are important exceptions. You can sue for wrongful termination if you were fired for a reason that violates public policy: refusing to commit an illegal act, exercising a legal right like filing a workers’ compensation claim, fulfilling a civic obligation like jury duty, or reporting illegal activity as a whistleblower.8Legal Information Institute. Wrongful Termination If your contract limits termination to “for cause” reasons, being fired without adequate justification is also grounds for a suit.
Fraud and Financial Misconduct
When someone lies to you about a material fact and you lose money because you believed them, you have a fraud claim. The elements: a false statement, knowledge it was false or recklessness about its truth, intent that you rely on it, your reasonable reliance, and financial harm as a result.9Legal Information Institute. Fraud Investment scams, fake product claims, and deceptive business practices all fit here.
Breach of fiduciary duty is a related claim that arises when someone in a position of trust acts against your interests. Financial advisors, business partners, corporate officers, trustees, and attorneys all owe fiduciary duties to the people they serve. A financial advisor who steers you into bad investments to earn higher commissions, or a business partner who secretly diverts company funds, has breached that duty. You have to prove the fiduciary relationship, the breach, and damages.
Unjust enrichment is a fallback that doesn’t require fraud or even a contract. If someone benefits at your expense without any legal justification, you can sue to recover the value of that benefit. A contractor who takes payment and never does the work is a common example. Even without a written agreement, a court can order the enriched party to return what they gained.
What a Court Can Give You
Winning a suit matters only if the court can actually fix the harm. What’s available depends on the claim.
Compensatory Damages
The most common remedy is compensatory damages, meant to put you back in the position you would have been in if the harm had never happened.10Legal Information Institute. Compensatory Damages Economic damages cover measurable losses like medical bills, lost wages, property repair costs, and future earning capacity. Non-economic damages cover harder-to-quantify harms like pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life. Documentation drives the economic side; testimony drives the non-economic side.
Punitive Damages
When the defendant’s behavior is especially reckless or malicious, a court can add punitive damages on top of compensatory ones.10Legal Information Institute. Compensatory Damages These aren’t about compensating you. They punish the wrongdoer and discourage similar behavior. Punitive damages are rare in ordinary negligence cases and typically reserved for intentional misconduct, fraud, or gross recklessness. Many states cap them at a multiple of the compensatory award or a fixed dollar amount.
Equitable Remedies
Sometimes money doesn’t solve the problem. A court can issue an injunction, which is an order requiring someone to do something or stop doing something.11Legal Information Institute. Injunction A neighbor can be ordered to stop dumping waste on your property; a former business partner can be ordered to stop using your trade secrets. In contract disputes, a court can order specific performance, forcing the breaching party to actually carry out the deal rather than just pay damages.1Legal Information Institute. Contract Courts usually reserve equitable remedies for situations where money alone would be inadequate.
Who Pays the Attorney
Under the default rule in American courts, each side pays its own attorney fees regardless of who wins. Even a successful plaintiff absorbs the cost of their own lawyer. Exceptions exist. Some contracts include a fee-shifting clause putting the loser on the hook. Some federal statutes allow fee recovery in discrimination and consumer protection cases. A judge can order the other side to pay if they engaged in bad-faith litigation tactics like filing frivolous claims or obstructing discovery.
Filing Deadlines
Every civil claim has a statute of limitations, a hard deadline for filing. Miss it, and the court will almost certainly dismiss the case regardless of its merits. More valid claims die here than anywhere else.
For personal injury, the deadline in most states falls between one and four years, with two or three years being typical. Contract claims generally allow longer, often four to six years, and written contracts sometimes get more time than oral ones. Fraud, property damage, and employment claims each have their own deadlines that vary by state.
The clock usually starts when the harm occurs, but a significant exception called the discovery rule can delay the start. If you couldn’t reasonably have known about the injury or its cause when it happened, the deadline may not begin until you actually discovered the problem, or should have discovered it through reasonable diligence. Medical malpractice cases often involve the discovery rule because patients may not realize a surgical error occurred until symptoms develop months or years later.
Claims against government entities deserve special care. Many states and the federal government impose much shorter notice requirements, sometimes as little as 60 to 180 days. Missing an administrative notice deadline can destroy an otherwise strong case before you ever reach the statute of limitations.
What It Costs
Filing fees, service costs, and attorney fees add up quickly. Court filing fees for a civil complaint vary widely by state and the amount claimed, but most fall in the range of a few hundred dollars. Professional process servers, who deliver the legal papers to the defendant, typically charge between $40 and $200 for standard service.
Attorney fees are the largest expense. Most lawyers handling personal injury, employment discrimination, and similar claims work on a contingency basis, taking a percentage of your recovery instead of charging hourly. You pay nothing upfront, and if you lose, you owe no fee. The standard contingency is roughly one-third of the settlement if the case resolves before trial, climbing to 40 percent or more if the case goes through litigation. Expenses like filing fees, expert witnesses, and medical record costs are usually advanced by the firm and deducted from your recovery at the end. Contract disputes, property claims, and similar cases less suited to contingency arrangements are typically billed hourly.
Small Claims Court as an Alternative
For smaller dollar amounts, small claims court is faster and cheaper than a full civil suit. Maximum claim limits range from $2,500 to $25,000 depending on the state, with many states setting the ceiling between $5,000 and $10,000. Filing fees are lower, hearings are informal, and many states prohibit or discourage attorney representation, meaning you present your own case to a judge or magistrate.
Small claims court works well for straightforward disputes: unpaid debts, security deposit fights, minor property damage, and small-scale contract breaches where the facts are simple. If your claim exceeds the dollar limit or involves complex legal issues, you’ll need regular civil court.
Steps Before You File
Jumping straight to a lawsuit is almost never the right first move. A well-written demand letter does several things at once. It forces the other side to take the dispute seriously, it creates a written record a judge can review later, and it often produces a settlement without the cost and delay of litigation.12Justia. Sending a Demand Letter Before Filing a Lawsuit A good letter lays out the facts, explains why the other party is responsible, states exactly what you want, and sets a reasonable deadline to respond.
Some claims require mandatory pre-suit steps on top of a demand letter. Federal employment discrimination claims require an EEOC charge first.7EEOC. Filing A Charge of Discrimination Medical malpractice claims in many states require pre-suit expert review or notice to the healthcare provider. Some contracts include mandatory mediation or arbitration clauses you have to follow before going to court. Skipping a required pre-suit step can get your case dismissed even if your claim is strong on the merits, so checking these requirements early is one of the most important things you can do.