In California, it’s possible to sue an employer for emotional distress. 

Proving emotional distress requires demonstrating mental anguish and diminished capacity to perform regular work and activities. It is best established by seeking professional medical help through a counselor and or psychologistDoctors with mental health certifications can clearly document how the mental condition is impacted the patient’s daily life, which can establish mental anguish and diminished capacity.

This proving emotional distress can be done by physical surveillance of the plaintiff over days or weeks to demonstrate that they are fully functioning, happy physically, active, and going on vacations.

Psychologists have broad discretion to infer mental symptoms and conditions based on extraneous life factors, traumatic events, and other objective facts. These expert opinions are weighed against the opposing sides, expert opinions, and ultimately the expert opinion that is favored by the jury is based on which expert has more credentials and a more established background in the area where they are creating opinions on.

This is further expanded through expert depositions, where the attorneys are able to ask those experts the foundation for their opinions, and to make best efforts to contradict and or support those opinions.

Ultimately, the best way to discredit the causation between an employment event or injury event and emotional English is by having evidence of a pre-existing mental condition prior to the date of the employment event or injury. That is the most clear way to discredit causation of mental anguish related to the employment event or injury.

If you discredit one witness at a deposition, simply based on their lack of expertise in the area, the opinionated on, the opposing lawyer can always retain another expert to rehabilitate their position before trial, and that’s because both sides are required to provide full disclosure about their experts and associated opinions prior to trial so that no surprises arise at the time of trial.

Emotional suffering damages based on mental anguish are very speculative, but also have a very large potential upside and are worth pursuing with experts. You simply cannot put a price on the missed opportunity of not attending your daughter’s wedding because you were too depressed and unable to attend due to a traumatic event that happened prior. 

You can argue back-and-forth on the reasonable cost of seeking medical treatment and missed work, which are special damages, and the outcome will be fairly certain after an expert analysis.

For general damages can be quite larger than anticipated based on the specific facts of emotional anguish