In a personal injury case, you pursue compensation for harms to you rather than to property. Personal injuries become compensable when a person’s actions, omissions, conditions, or words are at fault in causing the harm.
As you will read below, personal injuries do not limit themselves to physical aches, pains, or trauma. Your mental state, emotional stability, and standing within a community or the public may suffer damage at the hands of a tortfeasor.
Physical Harm
You readily associate personal injuries with physical harms. These include lacerations, fractures, injuries to the brain and spinal cord, and soft tissue injuries. In that last group, you will find bruises, strains, bursitis, and other inflammations around muscles, bones, and other tissues.
Personal injury plaintiffs suffer pain, decreased mobility, loss of strength or endurance, dexterity, and loss of hearing and sight. These may leave you unable to see, hear, lift or otherwise move objects, drive, and operate equipment. Disfigurement of your skin, such as from severe burns, can keep you from many jobs that require interaction with the public.
Your physical injuries generate economic and non-economic damages. In the former category lie medical expenses for visits with and treatments from hospitals, doctors, and physical therapists. You may have medical expenses for prescriptions and medical equipment such as walkers, prosthetics, and wheelchairs. Economic damages include lost wages and lost earning capacity.
Pain and suffering feature prominently in non-economic damages. After a wreck, slip, or fall, you may experience immediate pain. Personal injury law compensates you for continued discomfort and pain. This may manifest itself in diminished daily activities and recreation. Depending on the jurisdiction, juries may award as pain and suffering a multiple of your medical expenses. You can also recover under a loss of consortium theory the loss of your physically-injured spouse’s companionship, affection, and services.
Emotional Distress
The negligent, reckless, or intentional wrongdoing of others can create emotional distress for those involved or bystanders. This form of pain and suffering has symptoms such as insomnia, depression, and anxiety.
What you must prove in an emotional distress claim turns on whether you claim intentional or negligent conduct. An intentional infliction of emotional distress claim requires proof of the following:
Extreme and Outrageous Conduct: The defendant must do more than hurl insults. The conduct must go beyond the bounds of decency or shock the conscious.
Debt collection methods such as repeatedly calling the plaintiff’s employer or threatening arrest may suffice. Intentionally reporting your spouse’s or child’s death may qualify as extreme or outrageous given the closeness of these relationships. You may recover extreme emotional distress caused by assaults, batteries, abuse of power, or false imprisonment.
Severe Emotional Distress: Normally, you do not recover in personal injury law for hurt feelings. The emotional distress that may support a personal injury claim consists of anxiety, shock, worry, embarrassment, humiliation, and grief. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may need to prove that your distress represents a type diagnosed by physicians or mental health professions. In this camp, you likely will find as examples phobias, neurosis, depression, and anxiety disorders.
Generally, plaintiffs can establish intentional infliction of emotional distress claims without having to show a physical impact or manifestation of the distress. Some jurisdictions require a plaintiff with a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim to prove some physical harm or sign of distress. Where such a rule reigns, you can show physical signs such as loss of appetite, ulcers, sleeplessness, or physical trauma.
In some jurisdictions, you may prove that you experienced the threat of a physical injury even if you didn’t suffer an actual one. In these situations, you stand in the “zone of danger.” A vehicle or object approaches you close enough that you fear being seriously hurt and you become fearful of being around vehicles or objects.
Bystanders may have claims for negligent infliction of emotional distress based upon their relationship with the person actually injured. Such plaintiffs normally must show a close relationship (such as a parent, child, or spouse) with the injured person, that they were at the accident or incident scene or immediately arrived at the scene, and that they would have suffered more emotional distress than a bystander not related to the victim of the negligent act.
Injury to Reputation
Personal injury law also seeks to compensate plaintiffs for damaged reputations.
You may recover these damages as a victim of defamation. The tort has as its elements a false statement of fact, communicated or published to a third person, arising out of negligence or intentional conduct, and which causes some damage.
In certain cases, an untrue statement can on its face harm someone’s reputation. These defamation per se cases arise when the false statement:
- Accuses the victim of a crime of “moral turpitude,” such as homicide, theft, sexual assault, embezzlement, or tax or bankrupty fraud
- Asserts or implies that the plaintiff suffers from a loathsome disease, generally either leprosy or transmitted sexually (such as AIDS, herpes, syphilis)
- Claims or suggests that a person is uncharted
- Demeans a person’s competency or ability in the conduct of a business, trade, or profession
Beyond these scenarios, you have a defamation per quod claim. Statements that do not qualify as defamatory on their face include statements accusing you of speeding, being in a traffic accident, or missing a car payment. In these cases, you must show that you actually suffered some damage from the false statement. For example, a false statement that you violated a traffic law might result in higher insurance premiums.
Defamation plaintiffs face other potential hurdles. Truth defeats any defamation claim. Certain defendants escape liability for defamation because they made statements to protect themselves, their interests, others, or the public at large. These are qualified privileges, requiring the defendant to act in good faith, with a reasonable belief of the statement’s truth, and without malice.
Parties, judges, and witnesses in court proceedings, lawmakers debating or speaking during a legislative session, and those making statements required by law have an absolute privilege to defame. You have no claim against such speakers regardless of the good faith or motive of the speaker.
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