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Emotional Distress Claims, Dignitary Torts, And The Medical-Legal Fiction Of Reasonable Sensitivity, Alessandra Suuberg

Journal of Law and Health

Can individuals with a highly sensitive temperament recover in tort for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED)? In 2019, an article in the University of Memphis Law Review raised this question, referring to the "Highly Sensitive Person" (HSP) construct in psychology and asking whether the IIED tort’s 'reasonable person' standard discriminates against highly sensitive plaintiffs. Following up on that discussion, the present article considers how the law of IIED has historically treated plaintiffs with diagnosed psychiatric vulnerabilities that are either known or unknown to the defendant. The article also extends this discussion to the law's treatment of temperaments, such as …