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Can You File a Claim for Emotional Distress After an Accident?
If you have been in an accident and are struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD, or other psychological symptoms, you may be able to file an emotional distress claim in California. This article breaks down how these claims work, what evidence you need, and why your emotional suffering deserves to be taken seriously in your personal injury case.
Can You File a Claim for Emotional Distress After an Accident?
Nobody tells you about the weird stuff that happens after a car accident. Everyone asks about your neck, your back, whether the car is totaled. But nobody really asks if you are okay in the other way. The way where you cannot merge onto the freeway anymore without your hands going white on the steering wheel. The way where a car horn in a parking lot makes your chest tight for no good reason. And most people have no idea that an emotional distress claim in California could actually cover what they are going through.
Here is the thing. You can file an emotional distress claim and it is more common than most people realize. A lot of people do not know that, or they think it only applies to extreme situations. It does not. If an accident left you dealing with real psychological fallout, anxiety that will not quit, nightmares, depression that crept in slowly and then just stayed, the law actually accounts for that. You do not need a cast on your arm to prove you got hurt.
But let us not sugarcoat what “emotional distress” means in a courtroom. A judge is not going to award damages because you felt shaken up for a couple of days. That is normal. What the legal system is looking at is something that changed how you function. Maybe you stopped sleeping through the night. Maybe you pulled away from people you care about because you just did not have it in you anymore. Maybe you got diagnosed with PTSD three months after the crash and suddenly a lot of things started making sense.
And honestly? That last part happens way more often than people expect. Your body goes into survival mode after something like that. Sometimes the emotional stuff does not hit right away. It sneaks up on you weeks later, and by the time you realize something is off, you have already been white-knuckling through your days for a while.
Two Legal Theories Behind an Emotional Distress Claim
California has two ways to approach an emotional distress claim, and they are not interchangeable.
The first one, negligent infliction of emotional distress, is what applies in most accident cases. Somebody drove carelessly, that carelessness caused a wreck, and the wreck messed you up psychologically. You do not need to show that the other driver was trying to traumatize you. Just that they were negligent and your emotional suffering came from that.
Now, there is a wrinkle. California courts generally want to see some connection between the emotional harm and a physical injury or physical impact from the accident. If you were in the car and got banged up, even something relatively minor like whiplash or bruising, that link is pretty straightforward. Where it gets trickier is if you witnessed a family member get seriously hurt in the crash but you personally walked away without a scratch. You might still have a claim, but the court is going to look at whether you were physically present, whether you saw it happen in real time, and whether the person hurt was someone close to you. Not a coworker. Not a stranger. A parent, a spouse, a child.
The second theory is intentional infliction of emotional distress. This one almost never comes up in a standard car accident. It is reserved for conduct that is genuinely outrageous. Think road rage that crossed every line, someone deliberately using their vehicle as a weapon, that kind of extreme behavior. Courts set the bar very high on purpose, and most accident scenarios do not clear it.
Proving Emotional Distress After an Accident
This is the part that makes people nervous, and understandably so. You cannot photograph anxiety. You cannot put depression on a scale and weigh it. But the legal system has been dealing with these claims for a long time, and there are real ways to build a case.
Start with your mental health treatment records. If you went to a therapist, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist after the accident, those session notes and any formal diagnosis become some of your strongest evidence. A professional saying “this person has PTSD consistent with their described accident” carries serious weight. It takes the claim out of the realm of “they say they are upset” and puts it into “a licensed clinician confirmed a diagnosable condition.”
Prescriptions help too. If your doctor put you on Zoloft or Xanax or anything else to manage what you were going through after the wreck, that is a paper trail. Insurance adjusters love to say people are exaggerating. It is a lot harder to make that argument when there is a pharmacy record showing monthly refills.
Then there is the stuff you write down yourself. I know it sounds almost too simple, but keeping a journal of how the accident affected your day-to-day life is genuinely useful in these cases. Not a polished essay. Just honest notes. Could not drive to the grocery store today. Woke up at 3 AM again. Got irritable with my kid over nothing and felt terrible about it. Skipped my friend’s birthday because I could not handle being out. That kind of thing tells a story that medical records sometimes miss.
And do not overlook the people around you. Your spouse can talk about the changes they have seen. Your boss might notice you are not the same at work. A close friend might describe how you went from being social and easygoing to withdrawn and jumpy. Testimony from people who know you fills in the human side of the claim.
What Emotional Distress Damages Are Actually Worth
No set number. That is the honest answer. Emotional distress falls under non-economic damages in California, and those are calculated based on the individual circumstances. How bad is the distress? How long has it been going on? Is it getting better or is it looking like a long-term thing? How much has it disrupted the life you had before?
California does not cap non-economic damages in most personal injury cases, which matters here. There is no maximum a jury has to stay under when deciding what your emotional suffering is worth. In cases where someone develops chronic PTSD or severe depression tied to the accident, the emotional distress portion of the claim can actually outweigh the physical injury damages. That surprises a lot of people, but it reflects how seriously these conditions can derail someone’s life.
Insurance companies fight these claims hard. They will dig through your history looking for any pre-existing mental health treatment. They will argue you were already anxious before the accident. They will say you did not get help fast enough, so it must not have been that serious. All of that is noise designed to minimize what they owe you. Strong documentation and a professional diagnosis make that noise a lot less convincing.
Watch the Clock on This
California gives you two years from the date of the accident to file a personal injury lawsuit, and that includes emotional distress claims. If you are dealing with a government entity, a city bus, a public works vehicle, anything like that, you only have six months to file an administrative claim first.
The tricky part is that emotional symptoms do not always announce themselves on a schedule. Some people feel fine for months and then hit a wall. The filing deadline does not care about that timeline, though. It starts ticking from the date of the accident regardless. So even if you are still sorting through what you are feeling, it is worth getting a legal opinion early. You can always decide later what to do with it, but you cannot get that time back once it is gone.
Your Emotional Distress Claim Matters
That is the real takeaway here. Too many people sit on legitimate emotional distress claims because they convince themselves it is not serious enough, or that they should just toughen up, or that nobody is going to believe them anyway. California law exists specifically to say: yes, this counts. Emotional harm after an accident affects your quality of life, your relationships, your ability to do your job, and your basic sense of feeling safe. Those are not small things.
If the accident changed something in you that you have not been able to shake, pay attention to that. It is not a character flaw. It is what happens when your brain goes through something it was not built to handle on a random Tuesday afternoon. And it is something the legal system recognizes as real damage worth real compensation.
Your Emotional Pain Deserves to Be Heard
If you are struggling with anxiety, PTSD, or depression after an accident, Pyramid Legal can help you understand whether an emotional distress claim applies to your case. Our personal injury team fights for the full picture, not just the medical bills. Get a Free Case Evaluation Today →Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. California allows accident victims to file a claim for emotional distress as part of a personal injury case. The most common route is through negligent infliction of emotional distress, which applies when another person's careless behavior caused the accident and resulting psychological harm. You will typically need to show a connection between the emotional distress and a physical injury or physical impact from the crash, along with professional documentation of your condition.
The strongest evidence includes mental health treatment records showing a formal diagnosis such as PTSD, anxiety disorder, or depression. Prescription records for medications prescribed after the accident also carry weight. Personal journals documenting how the accident affected your daily life, along with testimony from family members, friends, or coworkers who can speak to visible changes in your behavior, help build a complete picture of your emotional suffering.
No. California does not place a cap on non-economic damages, including emotional distress, in most personal injury cases. The amount a jury can award depends on factors like the severity of your distress, how long it has lasted, whether it is expected to continue, and how significantly it has affected your daily life and relationships. In cases involving chronic PTSD or severe depression, the emotional distress component can sometimes exceed the value of the physical injury claim.
