Emotional distress is one of the most difficult things to prove in court. In order to prove emotional distress, you need to show that an injury has impacted your life and that it could potentially continue to affect you in the future.
Physical injuries with physical symptoms are far easier to prove, but when another person’s actions or inactions caused you emotional trauma, you may still have the right to recover compensation. Emotional distress requires a lot to prove you are truly hurt, and the best way to be successful with emotional distress claims is to hire a personal injury lawyer in Wisconsin to represent you throughout your emotional distress case.
Gingras, Thomsen & Wachs, LLP is a personal injury law firm with experienced personal injury attorneys who represent victims with emotional distress in their personal injury claims. In this blog post, we discuss what is considered as emotional distress, how to prove emotional distress, and how an experienced personal injury attorney can help.
Understanding Emotional Distress
Emotional distress is a different type of pain and suffering that follows any type of accident in a personal injury lawsuit. Essentially, it is a severe emotional reaction or emotional trauma following traumatic experiences, such as a car accident.
Common examples of emotional distress include:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Mood swings
- Social isolation
- Bodily harm
- Insomnia
- Suicidal thoughts
Emotional distress in any form can be debilitating, keeping you from living a normal life and affecting your overall well-being. Often, emotional distress can be as debilitating as physical pain. However, proving emotional distress can be complicated, which is why it is recommended to have an experienced attorney represent you.
How Emotional Distress Differs from Physical Injuries
It is always more challenging to prove emotional distress and severe emotional suffering. Physical injuries can be shown through photographs and records of other types of medical tests and treatments.
Emotional distress is more complicated because every person processes these stresses in their own way. Proving emotional distress requires knowing how to demonstrate the ways that it has impacted your life and turned it upside down. Emotional distress evidence includes testimony from mental health professionals and other medical professionals, medical records, family members, and witnesses. With this evidence, it is possible to recover compensation as you would for a physical injury.
How to Prove Severe Emotional Distress
If you have suffered emotional distress, you will need to prove it to get emotional distress compensation. First, it must be determined whether it was an intentional infliction of emotional distress or a negligent infliction of emotional distress.
The difference between two is that an intentional infliction is one where someone acts deliberately to cause severe emotional harm, such as through threats of physical harm or through outrageous conduct that leads to your mental anguish. Negligent infliction involves an unintentional act that causes mental suffering.
Both types will require emotional suffering evidence. In order to prove emotional distress after a car accident or other traumatic event, unlike physical injuries, the challenges are far greater. Here is how lawyers can show proof in emotional distress cases:
Intensity of Your Emotional Pain
The intensity of your emotional anguish and psychological pain such as showing that you have endured night terrors or experiencing vehophobia (the fear of driving) as it disrupts your daily life is needed for emotional distress damages. The more intense the emotional stress on a victim’s life, the more likely it is to receive compensation for psychological injury.
Duration of Emotional Impact
Demonstrating the lasting effects that your mental health condition has had on daily life can also be instrumental in proving your case. Medical records for therapy sessions can corroborate the length of time you’ve suffered from these impacts.
Related Physical Injuries
Any physical manifestation that has come from your injuries can reveal the depth of your psychological injuries. When your emotional struggles and psychological trauma are linked to a physical injury, it can help you in seeking justice for your claim.
Underlying Causes
The accident that caused your injuries additionally will demonstrate the severity of mental harm you’ve experienced. In emotional distress lawsuits, it is more likely you will be able to prove the level of harm based on the severity of the incident. For example, if you were rear-ended and you had no physical injuries, you would likely not be granted compensation for your emotional distress. However, if you were in a head-on crash, suffered severe injuries, and witnessed other passengers die on the scene, it would make more sense to award you these damages.
Medical Testimony
Along with medical bills, healthcare professionals can also testify about the ways your accident has caused your mental condition. With documentation, it will be easier to prove that the accident has played a vital role in your state of suffering.
The Importance of Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer for an Emotional Distress Claim
In these types of cases, the complex legal processes are often too difficult to handle on your own. If you have endured physical injuries that have affected your mental state, it is always best to work with an attorney.
Attempting to prove that you have experienced emotional distress while you try to get back to normal may further cause issues that affect your overall health. With the help of a lawyer, you have an advocate who knows how to present the evidence while getting you the medical care you need to heal.
Calculating emotional distress damages is important to understand how much you are owed in compensation. A lawyer will be able to evaluate every aspect of your case and find the best way to hold the liable party responsible for your suffering.
Gingras, Thomsen & Wachs, LLP is committed to representing victims in these scenarios to get them the money they deserve. If you or a loved one is enduring agony from mental and physical impacts after an accident someone else negligently caused, schedule a free consultation to learn more.
