How Arizona Law Treats Emotional Distress in Personal Injury Lawsuits

Arizona law allows you, as a plaintiff in a personal injury claim, to recover compensation in the form of money damages. These damages can be economic, non-economic, or, in some cases, punitive.

At Verderame Law Group Arizona Injury Lawyers, we represent Arizona residents who have personal injury claims. In this post, we consider emotional distress as one form of non-economic damages in a personal injury claim. If you have been injured due to the negligent, reckless, or intentional act of another person, contact us online to speak with an experienced Arizona personal injury attorney.

What is emotional distress?

Emotional distress is a term that describes the symptoms you can experience after a traumatic event. In many cases, this means after suffering a serious injury in an accident, like a car crash, slip and fall, or other similar event. For an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, Arizona requires extreme and outrageous conduct—often described as behavior that ‘shocks the conscience’—causing severe emotional distress.

Examples of severe and extreme mental suffering include:

• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Severe mood swings, like from anger and rage to depression and anxiety
• Panic attacks or night terrors
• Eating and sleeping disorders
• Distress and embarrassment about disabilities, scarring, and disfigurement

What is negligent infliction of emotional distress?

Fundamentally, negligence means a defendant owes you a duty of reasonable care and causes harm by breaching that duty. In Arizona, emotional distress can be recovered either as part of a standard negligence claim when you’re physically injured, or through a specific claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress, which may require that the plaintiff was within the zone of danger or witnessed injury to a closely related person, along with physical injury or illness resulting from the emotional distress.

Examples of how negligent infliction of emotional distress can occur include:

• Witnessing a motor vehicle accident or pedestrian accident involving a close family member that causes you to experience anxiety or PTSD
• Being placed in immediate danger of physical harm due to someone else’s negligence and later developing physical symptoms such as panic attacks
• Developing medically documented physical illness or symptoms after experiencing a traumatic event caused by another party’s negligence

What is intentional infliction of emotional distress?

Intentional infliction of emotional distress means that the emotional distress is not an inadvertent consequence of the defendant’s conduct, but the purposeful result. It is not always necessary for physical injury to be involved with intentional infliction of emotional distress claims, but physical manifestations can help support a persuasive claim.

Lawsuits that involve harassment, defamation, or invasion of privacy are often associated with intentional infliction of emotional distress claims. Conduct such as assault or threats may support an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim if it rises to the level of extreme and outrageous behavior.

Formulating emotional distress claims in personal injury cases

Unlike economic damages, like medical bills, lost wages, or the cost to repair or replace damaged property, emotional distress damages do not lend themselves to direct calculation based on out-of-pocket costs. They can still have a value assigned to them, but the supporting evidence tends to be more indirect.

Examples of evidence you can use to support a claim for emotional distress compensation include:

• Medical documentation of diagnosis and medical treatment, including psychological evaluations
• Physical symptoms like insomnia, headaches, or loss of appetite
• Records of work you have missed
• Witness statements from people like family members, friends, or coworkers that describe your emotional distress symptoms
• Expert witness testimony from mental health professionals
• Your own documentation of your emotional symptoms, like in a journal that you keep
• Evidence of the defendant’s unreasonable, intentional, or outrageous conduct

How much can you recover from emotional distress?

If your personal injury claim is resolved through a jury trial, then the jury will decide the value of your emotional distress claims. Or, if there is no jury, the trial judge will make this calculation.

In most cases that include a claim for emotional distress damages, though, you will settle your claim out of court. This is particularly true if the defendant is insured, in which case you will usually negotiate a settlement payout with the insurer.

How much your emotional distress claim will be worth in settlement depends on the strength of your personal injury case, generally, the evidence to support your emotional distress symptoms, and how much the defendant, its insurer, or both can afford to pay. One of the roles your personal injury attorney may fulfill for you will be to identify all the available assets the defendant has that can be used in settlement, including assets that can be liquidated if necessary.

Sometimes, multiple defendants may be responsible for the personal injury harm you have suffered. This can mean pursuing damages claims against all of them, including multiple insurers.

Settlement amounts vary widely depending on the facts of the case and are not subject to fixed ranges.

Unlike in some other states, Arizona has no statutory limit on how much you can receive for emotional distress damages.

What is the statute of limitations to sue for emotional distress?

In Arizona, the statute of limitations for personal injury claims is two years from the date of your injury or, if your injury symptoms are not immediately apparent at the time of the incident, then the two-year time limit begins when you knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its cause.

If you do not file your personal injury claim in time, then you could lose the right to seek compensation for emotional distress damages. In some cases, involving a public entity defendant, the time to act can be as short as a 180-day period to file a notice of claim, followed by a one-year statute of limitations.

Do you have a personal injury claim for emotional distress in Arizona?

Verderame Law Group Arizona Injury Lawyers is a law firm dedicated to seeking justice for personal injury victims. For more than 30 years, we have been fighting the good fight on behalf of the injured in Phoenix, Tempe, and across Arizona. If you or a loved one needs the services of an experienced and trustworthy personal injury law firm, contact us to discuss your legal options with an experienced Phoenix personal injury lawyer.