Personal Injury Lawyer
Physical injuries cause physical pain. They also cause emotional pain. When an injury is caused by someone’s negligence, compensation should take into account how it has mentally affected the victim as well. Whether compensation can be awarded for emotional pain that is not caused by a physical injury is a more complicated question with answers that vary by state.
The Many Forms of Emotional Distress
Emotional pain can take many forms. Injury victims are distraught when they miss a family gathering because they are hospitalized. An injury that keeps someone from working, exercising, or lifting a child can start someone’s depression. Anxiety grows from the uncertainty about how long you will be hurt or if you’ll ever be the same as you were before the wreck.
Scarring that affects physical appearance can be humiliating and drop your self-esteem off a cliff. The fact you can’t contribute to your family impairs an injury victim’s sense of self-worth almost beyond repair. Accident victims might be unable to socialize with their friends, making them feel isolated and alone.
Emotional distress sometimes manifests as a loss of energy or listlessness. Victims who experience emotional suffering can lose their appetite and make them starve. Personality changes brought on by constant pain create tension in a family and harm relationships.
Compensation for Emotional Distress
In addition to compensating victims for their financial losses, the civil justice system recognizes the importance of pain, suffering, and emotional distress on a person. In fact, those are usually the largest component of an injury settlement.
No amount of money can take away emotional pain or restore your mental health. However, money can be used to offset emotional suffering. Accident victims are free to use their compensation in whatever way contributes to their happiness. Some people invest settlement proceeds to help secure their futures. Some people use the money to take a vacation for to remodel a kitchen.
The point of compensation for emotional distress is that money can be used to improve the quality of a victim’s life. Juries recognize the significance of emotional suffering, and a good attorney understands how a jury will perceive a victim’s emotional injuries.
Emotional Distress Unaccompanied by Physical Injury
Courts allow compensation when emotional distress accompanies a physical injury because there is little doubt that the emotional suffering is real. The extent of emotional distress is something that lawyers and insurance companies might argue about, but courts trust juries to find the truth.
However when there is no physical injury and there is only emotional distress the answer is not so clear. Some Lawmakers have permitted the award of emotional injury compensation even when no physical injury occurs. Cases where there may not be a physical injury include things like employment discrimination and sexual harassment. Other cases include the situations when a family member witnesses someone they love get seriously injured but they themselves are not physically injured. Some states through the “zone of impact” allow that family member to recover damages while other states do not.
Intentional and Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
Most states allow someone to sue for emotional distress that is intentionally caused by another person.
In most states, a victim can be compensated if the offender’s conduct is intended to cause emotional pain, if the conduct was “outrageous”, and if the resulting distress is severe. Telephoning a victim every day to convey a credible death threat intending to make the victim fear for their life is an example of such outrageous conduct.
Most states also allow an individual to sue for emotional distress that is caused by negligence.
For instance, a mother who saw her child get hit by a car while crossing the street could sue the negligent driver for her emotional distress. States have developed many different rules about the circumstances for recovery due to emotional distress from negligence. For example, some states might permit recovery against a doctor who lies and tells their patient that they have AIDS; other states might not. Some states allow emotional distress damages when it results from negligent property damage (such as causing a fire that burns down a house), while other states do not.
Since the law of emotional distress compensation is complicated and varies from state to state, it is wise to seek legal advice from an attorney. A qualified personal injury lawyer can determine whether the law permits damages in your case.