What is Emotional Distress and How Does it Impact a Personal Injury Case?

You’ve probably heard the term “emotional distress” connected with lawsuits in personal injury cases. It is one of the factors that injury victims often receive compensation for. But what exactly is emotional distress? How do you prove it exists? Who decides how much it is worth?

As personal injury attorneys who have helped so many people in the Tallahassee area gain maximum compensation for emotional distress through litigation and in out-of-court settlements, we’ve seen a vast array of ways the emotional distress can impact someone’s life. We also know how to successfully document emotional distress and receive full compensation for the impacts.

Since everyone’s injuries and emotional state are different, the issues associated with emotional distress will be different in each case. However, there are some common factors that impact how emotional distress affects a personal injury case in Florida.

Emotional Distress is a Type of Noneconomic Loss

When you’ve been hurt in an incident– such as a car, truck, or motorcycle accident, or because of medical malpractice or a defective product– the harm you suffer impacts you in a variety of different ways. Florida’s civil legal system allows you to seek compensation for the different losses you experience because of your injuries. These losses are generally classified as either economic and noneconomic.

Economic losses are the consequences that have a direct economic value. The price of your medical bills and amounts to account for your future medical needs would be economic losses. The value of salary that you’ve lost while you’ve been out of work is another economic loss, and so is the amount you are expected to lose in the future if your future ability to work is impacted by your injuries. Damage to your car is another example of an economic loss. Although it can be challenging to calculate the value of anticipated future losses, there are methods and formulas that enable experienced injury attorneys to make these calculations.

Noneconomic losses are different. They don’t have a dollar value attached anywhere. However, they are actually much more valuable because they affect the quality of your life. Pain is probably the best-known example of a non-economic loss. There’s no direct economic equivalent. But many accident victims would give everything they own to experience life without the debilitating pain that has become their constant companion. 

Noneconomic losses are also referred to as intangible losses because they are abstract—you can see or touch them. But you can see evidence of the impact of these losses, and that is critical. When personal injury lawyers understand how to document and value noneconomic losses properly, they can often recover far greater amounts for these losses than they do for economic losses.

Defining Emotional Distress

Emotional distress, also known as emotional anguish, generally consists of suffering that is psychological or emotional. You can compare and contrast it with pain, which is generally defined as physical suffering. When an injury caused by someone else’s negligence or deliberate wrongdoing causes emotional suffering as well as physical suffering, then the victim may be eligible to receive compensation for the emotional and psychological effects as well as the physical. In a few situations, a person may be able to receive compensation for emotional distress even if they have not suffered a physical injury.

The effects of emotional distress can have as great an impact on an accident victim as their physical suffering. But they can often be much harder to prove, which is why it is important to work with the right attorney when pursuing your claim for emotional distress.

How to Prove Emotional Distress

Emotional distress can manifest in many different ways. Documenting the manifestations is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate how an accident victim is suffering from emotional distress and the impact it has had on their life.

An accident victim suffering from emotional distress may experience:

• Clinical depression
• Anxiety
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Difficult sleeping
• Fear of undertaking activities associated with the accident, such as driving
• Inability to concentrate

To prove the existence and impact of emotional distress, it is extremely helpful to have medical records from mental health professionals documenting the manifestations and any prescriptions issued for medications to help cope with the symptoms. An attorney may have a mental health professional testify as an expert witness about the effects of the emotional distress in the particular case.

The accident victim should keep a journal documenting their fears, anxieties, and other effects and discussing how they impact their life each day. For instance, if an accident victim is too depressed to get dressed and see their child perform in a school play or too frightened to drive to a child’s soccer game, that should be noted. It is helpful to describe feelings experienced, such as the feeling that everything is closing in or intense shaking at the sound of loud noises that brings the accident back in full force. The more detail that can be included in this journal, the better. It is not necessary to write it all down—instead, record yourself talking into your phone and use software to transcribe your words in writing.

Friends, family, and co-workers can also testify about the changes they have observed in behavior since the accident.

Get the Help You Deserve to Recover Maximum Compensation for Your Emotional Distress

Emotional distress can destroy the quality of your life, and the impact may never go away. The experienced attorneys at Searcy Denney Tallahassee understand what you’re going through because we’ve been helping accident victims overcome their trauma for decades.

We know how to prove the damage you’ve suffered psychologically and emotionally so that you can receive full and fair compensation for this and other non-economic losses. Money will not erase your pain, but it provides a sense of justice that can jump-start the emotional healing process and provide resources for support going forward.

If you have suffered because of harm caused by another’s negligence or intentionally wrongful behavior, we invite you to schedule a confidential, free consultation with a compassionate and experienced personal injury attorney at Searcy Denney Tallahassee. To get started, call us at 888-549-7011 or contact us online now.