How to Know if You Can Be Compensated for Emotional Distress
Personal injuries caused by traffic accidents, work-related incidents, or others often leave people with severe consequences. However, for most people, these consequences are physical. Getting compensated for the injuries you’ve suffered is fairly straightforward as long as your injuries are visible. But, what about those injuries that aren’t visible? Emotional distress is a very real thing, but it is extremely hard to prove in court. Here’s how to tell if you can get compensated for emotional distress.
Defining Emotional Distress
Personal injury accidents are traumatic. This applies to both severe accidents and those that leave temporary physical injuries. The psychological trauma of being injured can easily outlast the injury itself. People cope with traumatic events in different ways. Some can come to terms with their trauma, but some begin to suffer various side effects. These shouldn’t be discounted or ignored. Trouble sleeping, trouble focusing, constant worrying or fear, reliving the accident on a loop — these are all signs of emotional distress. Depending on the severity of symptoms, emotional distress could lead to all long term psychological effects.
How Can you Prove Emotional Distress?
Proving emotional distress has always been a touchy subject. There are plenty of those who still argue that emotional distress isn’t worth the compensation. Although a loud minority, the fact that such advocates exist is concerning considering the body of evidence that suggests they are wrong.
That being said, proving emotional distress isn’t easy. For the most part, mounting an emotional distress claim comes down to witness testimonies and medical documentation. Typically, personal injury specialists often combine official medical findings with the testimony of your loved ones or people close to you. It is also not unheard of for you to be called as a witness.
If you’ve noticed that you’re suffering from symptoms of emotional distress, it’s a good idea to start a log of every symptom you’re experiencing during the day. That log can later be used to solidify your claim.
Do Previously Diagnosed Conditions Affect your Chances?
Overall, there is nothing preventing a person with a previously diagnosed mental condition from collecting emotional distress compensation. However, it is also true that a previous condition makes it a lot harder to prove that your emotional distress appeared as a consequence of your accident rather than your condition. The solution to this problem comes in the form of being vigilant when it comes to gathering proof.
You and your lawyer should do your best to gather as much medical documentation as possible that would define your pre-existing condition. You can use said proof and call witnesses to prove that there is no correlation between your emotional distress and your pre-existing condition. It’s not going to be easy, but it is absolutely possible.
Emotional Distress as the Only Form of Personal Injury
A decent majority of emotional distress cases involve consequences caused by a physical injury. However, that is not always the case. It is widely accepted that emotional distress can appear in individuals who had no physical injuries of their own. Science has proven that simply witnessing an accident or a traumatic event can cause emotional distress.
If you were to see someone get severely injured, or if you witnessed the loss of life, your experience could trigger various symptoms of emotional distress. The question that most such victims are trying to find answers to is whether they are entitled to compensation?
The answer isn’t as clear-cut as many would like it to be. An emotional distress claim requires the plaintiff to have suffered some sort of injury, whether that injury is physical or psychological. For example, let’s say you were walking down the road, and a piece of the facade fell inches from you, nearly killing you. Such an event wouldn’t constitute personal injury even if you have suffered emotional distress over it.
Let’s take another example. You are a building inspector checking out the very same building from our previous example. You’ve noticed that the facade is about to collapse, and you report it to your bosses. Maybe the building belongs to someone who has power over your boss, and your boss decides to fire you instead of dealing with the issue. Any emotional distress suffered from being fired in this example could be used as the foundation for a claim.
Get Good Lawyers
At the end of the day, no matter how solid your case is, it won’t do you much good unless you have experienced injury lawyers by your side. Always hire specialized law firms who know the ins and outs of injury law.
