Cite as: 538 U. S. 135 (2003)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
say, about one in four, compare Cagle, Criteria for Attributing Lung Cancer to Asbestos Exposure, 117 Am. J. Clin. Path. 9 (2002), with Ries, supra, at Table I-16, and whose chance of dying of a smoking-related disease is already about 50-50, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Projected Smoking-Related Deaths Among Youth—United States, 45 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 971 (1996), suddenly develop a reasonable, genuine, and serious fear of cancer when the chance of cancer or smoking-related death rises even further? There is simply no way to know, and it is close to impossible, in the ordinary case, to evaluate a plaintiff's affirmative answer.
Second, the law's recovery-limiting rules have sought to avoid pure jury speculation, speculation that can produce "unlimited and unpredictable liability." Metro-North, supra, at 433 (internal quotation marks omitted). How is the jury, without speculation, to measure compensation for the augmentation of a cancer fear from, say, two in nine to one in three? Given the fact that most of us lead our lives without compensation for fear of a 22% risk of cancer death, Ries, supra, at Table I-16, what monetary value can one attach to an incrementally increased fear due to a risk, say, of 30%? The problem here is not the unreality or lack of seriousness of the fear. It may be all too real. The problem is the impossibility of knowing an appropriate compensation for asbestosis insofar as its appearance tears away that veil of disregard that ordinarily shelters most of us from fear of cancer, if not fear of death itself. The majority's verdict control measures, ante, at 159, n. 19, will not help much in this respect.
Third, it would be perverse to apply tort law's basic compensatory objectives in a way that compensated less serious injuries at the expense of more serious harms. Yet, as Justice Kennedy points out, the majority's broad interpretation of the scope of compensable fears threatens to do precisely that. The kind of fear at issue here—a "brooding,
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