In assessing compensatory damages for legal remedies in tort, how must the judgment be paid?

In a perfectly accurate world, after a defendant is found liable in court for harm caused to a tort victim, the victim would be able to track the costs of their injury in real-time and bill those costs directly to the defendant, whether they are incurred today, tomorrow, or 20 years from now. This isn't realistic or practical. Even if there were some magic app to accomplish this, it would further burden the court system to have to maintain indefinite enforcement. Thus, when a tort victim wins a judgement, the amount of money is calculated for the lifetime of the injury, and then discounted to present value.

In other words, if a tort victim suffers an injury that will impact their life for 30 years, and the value of that impact is $1 million, it wouldn't be fair to cut them a check today for $1 million. Why? Because $1 million in the future is worth less today as a result of opportunity costs, investment potential, and a handful of other factors you probably zoned out through in your undergrad finance classes. Thus, the court takes the $1 million figure and calculates what that total amount would be worth today, then awards that amount to the plaintiff.

Note that traditionally, courts did not take into account inflation when performing their calculation. However, some modern jurisdictions do.