[1][2] The plot revolves around the brilliant, ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and her newest protégée, recent law school graduate Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne).
The regular cast consists of Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Ted Danson, Tate Donovan, Željko Ivanek and Noah Bean.
Appointed a trustee by the US government, she is tasked to recover billions of dollars lost to the largest investment fraud in Wall Street history: a fraudulent Ponzi scheme run by Louis Tobin (Len Cariou), a Bernie Madoff-type.
Tom has a personal involvement because he invested in the Tobin fund and lost his savings and those of his parents and in-laws, which makes his work on the case a conflict of interest.
Ellen, meanwhile, has stayed true to her promise not to return to Patty's firm and has avoided contact for the past year that she has been working at the District Attorney's office.
Following Tom's funeral, Patty indirectly admits to Ellen that she brought on a miscarriage so she could go to New York and accept an important job offer, thus beginning her climb to the top of the legal profession.
Ending Ellen's search for a career-defining case, she begins researching and gathering witnesses for a wrongful-death suit against private military contractor Howard T. Erickson (John Goodman), who heads the "HighStar" security company.
Rutger Simon is revealed to be the one who intentionally leaked Naomi Walling's personal e-mails, hoping to implicate McClaren as the leaker so he can take control of McClarentruth.org.
Simon convinces Patty Hewes to become an investor in the site when he takes over in exchange for his testimony against Channing McClaren, Helmut Torben, and Bennett Herreshoff.
Ellen walks with her daughter and tells her that they're going to visit her dad at the VA (the Department of Veterans Affairs) which means the child's father is Chris Sanchez.
The second season found Patty and her firm inadvertently thrown into a massive case against the billion dollar-worth energy corporation Ultima National Resources (UNR).
Returning recurring actors in prominent roles were Ted Danson, David Costabile, Tom Aldredge, Mario van Peebles and Glenn Kessler.
The third season, inspired by the Bernie Madoff scandal, tracked Patty's aggressive pursuit of bringing down the disgraced Tobin family after they were revealed to be a part of a Ponzi scheme that ripped off millions of citizens.
Lily Tomlin special guest starred throughout the season as the secretive matriarch Marilyn Tobin, while Len Cariou appeared as the patriarch of the family blamed for all of the fraud and conspiracy.
John Goodman played Howard Erickson, the CEO of the shadowy military contractor who becomes the defendant against Patty and Ellen over the corruption that occurred in the war zone.
Notable recurring characters during the fourth season were played by Derek Webster, Griffin Dunne, Judd Hirsch, Fisher Stevens, and Bailey Chase.
The fifth and final season pitted Patty and Ellen against one another in court, with the case surrounding the suit of the founder of a WikiLeaks type of website, Channing McClaren, played by Ryan Phillippe.
Notable recurring characters during the fifth season were played by Victor Garber, M. Emmet Walsh, William Sadler, Gbenga Akinnagbe and Gillian Alexy.
[16] When creators Kesslers and Zelman pitched the show to executives at FX, network president John Landgraf suggested they consider Glenn Close for the main character Patty Hewes.
[18] After a three-hour meeting with the creators, Close accepted the role, impressed particularly by the powerful persona of the character "as the head of her own law firm [...] in a male-dominated world".
"[6] In preparation for the role, Close met with several female attorneys in New York, including Mary Jo White, Lorna Schofield, and Patricia Hynes.
[19] As part of his preparation, Danson studied the collapse of Enron by watching documentaries such as The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and meeting CEOs of various Fortune 500 corporations.
[21] Series cast members Rose Byrne and Tate Donovan, portraying Ellen Parsons and Tom Shayes respectively, secured their parts through auditions.
[32] The role of Bill Herndon was, as with Ray Fiske or Katie Connor's, conceived as a very minor part but was significantly increased after Judd Hirsch made a good impression.
The frieze of the New York County Courthouse is also shown, inscribed with a quote from George Washington, "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government".
[38] The New York Times reported that FX continued to hold a small stake in the show and that "[The] series offers a way for the Audience Network to define itself as a provider of niche entertainment for an educated, upper-middle-class demographic, an experiment it started by picking up the football drama Friday Night Lights from NBC.
"[64] When the series returned for its fourth season in July 2011, after it was saved by DirecTV, Maureen Ryan (of The Huffington Post) reacted positively said "Damages knows what it's about these days.
John Landgraf hoped the show would continue on the air following its third season; after taking into account the encore presentations and "extraordinary" DVR numbers, the ratings appeared to be quite good.
Along with Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and Ted Danson returning in their respective categories, featured cast additions Martin Short and Lily Tomlin as newly nominated actors.
For its fifth and final season, Glenn Close received her third Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Drama, after being absent the previous two years.