Post-traumatic stress disorder is what most people call “PTSD” for short. PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that can happen to people who have been through or seen a traumatic event. The medical definition of PTSD matters a lot in legal cases, especially when you’re trying to prove damages. These traumatic events can include natural disasters, serious accidents, violent attacks, or combat. The symptoms include flashbacks and nightmares, intense and disturbing thoughts and feelings, feelings of sadness, fear, and anger, and strong negative reactions to certain triggers.
These symptoms show how trauma changes the way your brain looks out for danger. Your nervous system stays on high alert all of the time, which makes you think safe situations are dangerous. Your mind replays these traumatic scenes over and over and not because you want it to, but because it thinks staying ready will keep you safe from being hurt again.
About 8% of people in the US live with PTSD symptoms. That’s millions of people dealing with something you can’t see while they’re trying to manage work, relationships, and everything else in their everyday life. If you’ve had psychological or social problems after something traumatic happened to you, a doctor might diagnose you with PTSD. Once a doctor diagnoses you with PTSD, you can sue the person who caused your trauma.
The legal system has become much better at recognizing PTSD over the past few decades. Courts now understand that psychological injuries can affect your life just as much as physical injuries do. This change means trauma survivors can now get compensation in ways they couldn’t before.
To get diagnosed with PTSD, you need to have some kind of traumatic event in your life. But you don’t have to experience it yourself. You can develop PTSD just from finding out that someone close to you died.
How to Succeed with a PTSD Lawsuit
When you sue for PTSD, it won’t erase the harm that was done to you. But it can help take care of some of the financial burden that comes with this condition. You’ll probably need to pay for therapy and medication, and you may need to miss time from work as well.
If you want your PTSD lawsuit to be successful, you need to meet all of the elements of proof for PTSD cases. The legal standard here is pretty exact. When someone’s recklessness or negligence caused you to develop PTSD, your lawsuit will probably focus heavily on expert testimony. Your attorney may bring in an expert witness to help make your case stronger.
Injury
You need to show that you suffered some kind of psychological injury, which you can show through your different symptoms. The best way to prove this injury is with a diagnosis from a medical professional.
Causation
You need to show that a specific traumatic event triggered your mental or emotional injury. Your timeline needs to be very clear here. For your lawsuit, provide as much evidence as you can that this exact traumatic event is responsible for your diagnosis.
Recoverable damages
As I mentioned before, you should try to recover damages for all of the costs that come with your PTSD diagnosis and treatment. Courts are usually more willing to award damages when those damages are simple to calculate and concrete.
Expert testimony shapes how your entire case turns out. These professional witnesses bring the medical credibility that turns your personal experience into legal evidence. What they say will determine if your claim can withstand cross-examination.
One of the biggest problems you’ll run into in a PTSD lawsuit comes from what lawyers call the “battle of experts.” The other side’s experts are probably going to argue that PTSD can only be triggered by major traumatic events. Defense attorneys will question every single part of your diagnosis. The jury will have to determine if your PTSD claims are real. Some evidence that can help support your case includes your medical records and testimony from witnesses who saw what happened to you.
PTSD and Claims for Emotional Distress
Sleep problems, anxiety attacks, depression, or difficulty concentrating.
These symptoms give you a pretty wide base to work from when you’re making a legal claim. The experiences you’ve written down and kept track of will become the proof you need to support your case.
If you want to sue for PTSD as part of an emotional distress claim, you’ll be working with what lawyers call the personal injury legal theory. In this situation, the responsibility to prove your case is completely on you. When you go to court with cases like these, you’ll need to show the judge that your extreme feelings have really disrupted your everyday life.
There are two different legal paths you can take when you’re trying to get compensation for emotional distress. Each one needs different proof and has its own requirements. Your lawyer will pick the one that makes the most sense for what happened to you.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress
This happens when someone acts in a very outrageous way on purpose, trying to make another person go through serious emotional distress. For example, if someone threatens to hurt you later on or deliberately tries to cause you psychological harm.
Negligent infliction of emotional distress
This happens when someone causes you serious emotional distress because they were careless. If you want to claim this type of emotional distress, you need to have had some kind of physical contact that happened because the other person was careless. Or you might have been close enough to danger that you could have been hurt, which also lets you make this kind of claim.
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What Are Some Implications of PTSD Diagnosis for Other Legal Matters?
A PTSD diagnosis could affect many different legal matters, and these can be either civil or criminal cases. For civil cases, you can file a personal injury lawsuit. But you can also make claims against employers under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) if they don’t give you reasonable accommodations for your PTSD. The workplace protections by themselves are a strong reason to get your condition documented. PTSD could also help you qualify for workers’ compensation benefits if your trauma happened at work.
These civil protections give you different ways to get financial help while you’re getting treatment. Medical bills and lost wages pile up quickly when you’re trying to manage trauma symptoms. Each type of legal claim serves its own role. Personal injury lawsuits deal with whoever originally caused your trauma, while ADA claims focus on the accommodations you need at work going forward.
If we’re talking about criminal cases, PTSD is considered a mental condition, so it can be used as a criminal defense or what’s called a mitigating circumstance. This classification as a mental health issue opens up legal options you wouldn’t normally have. If you have a PTSD diagnosis, you might be able to use defenses like “battered woman” or “rape trauma” syndrome, partial defense of diminished capacity, or even a full defense of insanity.
Criminal courts are starting to better understand how trauma changes the way people think and act. These defenses don’t mean what you did was okay. But they help the court understand the context that might affect your sentence or even the outcome. Your lawyers can present your medical records along with witness testimony to help build a strong defense.
If you have PTSD, you might be able to get disability benefits. You’ll need to gather some paperwork and medical records. But it’s definitely possible if you have the right documentation. To qualify for these benefits, your medical records need to show that you have at least one of these symptoms: recurring memories of a traumatic experience, obsessions or compulsions that keep coming back, an irrational fear of a situation or object that makes you stay away from it, serious panic attacks at least once a week, or a diagnosis of generalized persistent anxiety.
Your symptoms also need to really affect your life. That means your normal everyday activities are limited, you have a hard time maintaining social relationships, you find it hard to stay focused or keep pace with things, or you experience repeated breakdowns or psychiatric symptoms that last a long time.
Disability benefits give you monthly payments and healthcare coverage while you’re recovering. The approval process does take some time. But these payments can replace your income when your symptoms make it too hard to work on a regular basis. Many people find that having this financial safety net eases their stress and helps them concentrate on their recovery.
How Much Compensation Can You Claim for a PTSD Lawsuit?
The compensation you get from a PTSD lawsuit will usually look like what you’d get from other personal injury cases. These payments include money that’s meant to pay you back for what you’ve lost because of what the defendant did or didn’t do. The courts have specific ways they handle these cases. Before the court figures out how much money to give you for PTSD, they’ll look at a few different factors.
They’ll look at how bad your injuries are, the wages you’ve lost or won’t be able to earn later on, your pain and suffering if that applies to your case, and if your insurance will help pay for any of the costs that come with PTSD. In the worst cases, they might even award extra punishment money.
All of these factors matter quite a bit for how much money you’ll get. Your medical records that show your therapy sessions and what you’ve spent on medication give the court real proof of what this has cost you. When they work out your lost income, they look at what you’re missing now and also think about how much less you could make down the road.
About sixty percent of people who file PTSD cases end up with some kind of settlement. Out of these people, around thirty percent get at least one million dollars. But these numbers don’t tell you everything. You need to remember that the amount you get can change quite a bit depending on lots of different factors. A lawyer who knows about PTSD cases will help you get more money, after they’ve figured out if your case is strong enough to move forward with.
The exact parts of your situation will affect every dollar you get. If you have strong medical records, juries usually give more money. How bad your symptoms are plays a big part too.
It’s also true that not every case is worth taking to court. Some cases don’t have enough legal support behind them, and for some people with PTSD, going through a lawsuit would just be too hard on them emotionally. The court process itself might bring back bad memories and make things worse for the people who are suing.
When Should You Look For Help from an Attorney?
PTSD lawyers can help you see if you have legal grounds for a claim, and they’ll tell you what kind of evidence you’ll need. With these cases, medical records are what matter. Your therapy notes, psychiatric evaluations, and work history, these all help build the paper trail that turns what you went through into damages that the court will accept.
If you’re thinking about going after a PTSD claim, you definitely should talk to an experienced personal injury attorney. They can guide you through the whole process while making sure you follow your state’s laws. But state laws are very different from place to place. The deadlines to file can be anywhere from one year to six years depending on where you live, and what evidence you need also changes based on your local court decisions and laws.
Also, they’ll go to court for you when you need them to and work to get you a fair damages award. When you have a lawyer, it makes a big difference during settlement negotiations. Insurance adjusters usually lowball people who don’t have lawyers. But, when you have an attorney backing your claim, they treat it more seriously and their first offers are usually higher. Your attorney will take care of all of the back-and-forth with the other side’s lawyers so you can focus on your treatment and recovery.
