Election of remedies

In the law of civil procedure, election of remedies is the situation in which a winning party in a lawsuit must choose the means by which its injury will be remedied. For example, if a court finds that the plaintiff's painting was stolen by the defendant, then the plaintiff has two possible routes to restore the loss. The plaintiff can elect to either receive monetary damages equal to the entire value of the painting, or the plaintiff can ask the court to order the return of the stolen property (plus some minor amount of compensation for the suffering caused by its deprivation). However, the plaintiff cannot have both, and must therefore make an election of one or the other.