Then if I blow up your car, your damages are all theoretical. Maybe it would have broken down and cost more to repair than it was worth. Maybe you would never have sold it.
You say that as though the car itself doesn't matter! First I had a car, then you blew it up, and now I have no car. All I have is a pile of shards that I can't drive to work. Those are tangible damages.
As I quite clearly said, their has to be a wrongful act and the harm has to be fairly traceable to a wrongful act.
This seems both unnecessary and a little too convenient. Harming me is a wrongful act in itself - it's wrong to harm people, isn't it? If diminishing the resale value of my property is a legitimate, actionable harm, how can you say no wrongful act has taken place when you do it?
The cost to restore even very cheap items to their original state can be exorbitant.
In that case you'd use the replacement cost, unless you can make a convincing argument that a replacement is insufficient.
And in some cases, even if you restore something to its original state, additional harm is still done (like the cost of renting another home in the meantime). You have to sum all the actual damages fairly attributable to the act. It's actually not as simple as "cost to restore" or "market value".
Correct, but you have to be careful not to include
phony, wishful damages in that sum.