Emotional Distress in a Personal Injury Claim

After an injury, you may experience a great deal of emotional distress and want to make a claim for that in your personal injury case.

As an experienced Tampa Personal Injury Attorney, I am often asked about emotional distress.  In most cases, one of the potential elements of damages is mental anguish or emotional distress. There are a few causes of action where emotional distress is not available in some wrongful death cases and in some injury, cases involving maritime or admiralty law or even Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA), a railroad worker hurt on the job. There are situations where emotional damages may not be available to let’s say family members, spouses, children, but for the most part, emotional damages or mental anguish is available.

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Emotional Distress | Challenges

One of the things you should understand about mental anguish is that some people may have prior treatment with a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and what the defense attorney will try to do is bring up that prior treatment with a psychologist or a psychiatrist to basically claim that your emotional problems, your mental anguish, are really preexisting. They’re just problems that you had prior to this accident, prior to your injuries, and sometimes the effect of that prior psychological or psychiatric treatment can impair your ability to get a fair shot at trial. Sometimes your attorney may discuss with you the possibility of dropping your mental anguish claim in order to keep the psychological or psychiatric records out of evidence, which will oftentimes benefit you in the prosecution of your case.

By and large, emotional damages, mental anguish is a recognized element of damages in most causes of action.

Do you want to make a claim for emotional distress of mental anguish? Please call our experienced Tampa, Florida personal injury lawyers today to get a free consultation.