This video explains emotional distress and mental anguish in legal cases. It highlights the challenges of proving these claims in Alabama without a physical injury. Real-life examples illustrate how emotional distress can impact individuals after accidents.
Emotional distress refers to mental suffering or anguish caused by an event, such as an accident. It can include feelings of fear, anxiety, or depression.
In Alabama, it is very difficult to win a case based solely on emotional distress without any physical injury. Physical injury is often required to support such claims.
Emotional distress can be proven through client testimony and expert opinions from mental health professionals. It's important to communicate the impact of the distress effectively.
One of the things you always hear on the TV lawyer shows, as I like to call it, is my client has mental anguish or emotional distress. So exactly what is that? Well, emotional distress, mental anguish is, you know, it's this fear, it can be depression, it can be any of the mental health issues that we all know about. Now, I will tell you in Alabama, it's very, very difficult, if not almost impossible, to win a case where a client has suffered solely emotional distress or mental anguish. Without some form of physical injury. Now, emotional distress, mental anguish, where a person has suffered physical injury, is in fact quite common. You know, a lot of cases, especially traumatic injury cases, but not even in necessarily traumatic injury cases. I have clients throughout the years who have suffered emotionally due to the car accident or the injury they experience. Recently, I have a young lady who was involved in a car accident case and she was injured, not severely, but she has developed a fear of driving. She cannot get into a car. She is so afraid that another wreck is going to happen that it has paralyzed her. She is now in a treatment regimen, she is in a treatment protocol and they are reintroducing her to driving. Now, you may sit there and say, "Well, that doesn't even make sense. "You ought to just get over and go home." But it's a fear that's real to her. And in cases where a person has suffered like that, so they've had a car wreck and now they have a fear of driving, then a attorney needs to be able to present that to a jury in a way that makes them understand and have compassion for that person. For me personally, I like to tell this story. Years ago, I fortunately have only been in two car accidents. Neither were my fault. And I wasn't injured in either one of them. But one in particular has left me, I guess I could say mentally scarred a little bit. And this is what happened. I was on a highway, it was a four lane highway divided by a median and I was in the inside lane going to visit my parents on Saturday morning. And as I was in the inside lane driving on the highway, a car to the outside lane or to my right did not see me in their blind spot and came over into my car and knocked me into the median. Unfortunately, there was a culvert which I hit and it destroyed my car, but I walked away unscathed. Ever since then, I have this fear in my mind when I see a car beside me that they're gonna come over into my lane. And if I see them make any move toward the center line, I instantly react. Now, I wasn't injured. That's been 25, 30 years ago. But yet I still have that same fear. And that's what emotional distress is. That's what mental anguish is. Sometimes we recover from it and go on. But for some people, that fear remains from that accident or that injury and it's real. And the attorney, such as Tom and I, must be able to communicate that to the jury through the testimony of the client and those mental health experts who are training them.
