Oklahoma jurisprudence has taken quite a journey through time in the emotional distress arena. It is a ride that sometimes leaves litigators a bit shaken and that has often led to inconsistent rulings on very similar facts. For example, in a case decided only four years after statehood, the court in W. Union Tel. Co. v. Choteau[1] observed: “The 'mental anguish' doctrine in telegraph[2] and other cases throughout the United States has been a fruitful field of discord. Not only are courts of different jurisdictions at direct variance with each other, but some of the courts which allow recovery have been at cross-purposes with themselves in their adjudications, and in all numerous instances of dissent and dissenting opinions without reference to the holding have been made and filed.” The Choteau court ultimately held that "the right of recovery herein did not exist at common law" and that as far as the emotional distress claims, "the judgment rendered herein [in plaintiff’s favor] was erroneous."[3]

It's been 114 years since then, and it seems each passing decade has brought significant developments. But what happens today in Oklahoma if your client is distressed and wants to sue over it? Let us travel back through time to see where the law is currently.

THE TWO CATEGORIES OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS CLAIMS

Oklahoma has historically recognized two claims based in emotional distress: intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) and negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED). Technically, Oklahoma does not recognize NIED as an independent tort claim. Rather, it is nestled within the realm of negligence in general. Accordingly, NIED claims require the plaintiff to demonstrate the four key elements of a simple negligence action: 1) The defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff (not to cause the plaintiff emotional distress); 2) the defendant breached that duty to the plaintiff (the tortfeasor did engage in emotionally distressing conduct to the plaintiff); 3) the breach was the actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury (the emotionally distressing conduct was indeed the cause of the plaintiff’s emotional distress); and 4) the plaintiff suffered actual emotional distress (the plaintiff can prove they suffered mentally).[4]

On the other hand, Oklahoma does recognize IIED as an independent tort. For IIED claims, plaintiffs must establish the following: 1) extreme and outrageous conduct by the defendant (the conduct must be so egregious that it is considered atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society); 2) intent or recklessness on the part of the tortfeasor (the defendant must have acted intentionally or recklessly); and 3) the suffering of severe emotional distress (the plaintiff must demonstrate severe mental distress that no reasonable person could be expected to endure).[5] These criteria are outlined in the Oklahoma Uniform Jury Instructions, which define emotional distress as encompassing "mental distress, mental pain and suffering, or mental anguish," including reactions such as "fright, horror, grief, humiliation, embarrassment, anger, chagrin, disappointment, and worry.”[6]

Early Oklahoma jurisprudence on emotional distress focused intently on whether the alleged mental injury was accompanied by physical injury to the plaintiff. The question, therefore, became whether bodily injury was necessary to establish an emotional distress claim, whether negligent or intentional. Notably, Oklahoma law typically requires that emotional distress be accompanied by physical injury or that the plaintiff was directly involved in the incident leading to the distress. Mere bystanders or those without a physical manifestation generally cannot recover.

EARLY JURISPRUDENCE

Union Tel. Co. v. Choteau

One of the earliest Oklahoma cases to deal with an emotional distress claim was Choteau, supra, in 1911. There, the plaintiff claimed emotional distress from the defendant’s negligent delivery of a telegram. Defendant Western Union was charged with getting to Mr. Choteau a “prepaid telegram, announcing the serious illness of [his] father. It read ‘William very low: notify Ed and Julia.’”[7] But the telegram was late, and Mr. Choteau missed the opportunity to say his goodbyes to his dying father. The court stated its task: “May a party ... recover substantial damages solely for the mental distress occasioned by the negligence on the part of the delivery company ... where such negligence results in denying him an opportunity of attending upon his father in his last illness, and seeing him prior to his death.”[8]

In order to answer this question, the court roamed through the already prolific national case law on emotional distress claims. Ultimately, it concluded that purely mental injury claims (as opposed to physical claims involving mental injury) were not found at common law; therefore, without statutory authority for such claims, the plaintiff could not recover on his NIED claim.[9] The court reasoned it was not “wise to venture upon the far more speculative field of mental anguish” and that mental anguish alone “will not sustain an action for damages.”[10]

St. Louis & San Francisco Railway v. Keiffer

A few years later, in 1915, in St. Louis & San Francisco Railway v. Keiffer,[11] the plaintiff sued the railway for breach of contract. The plaintiff’s brother was very ill and needed to travel from Madill to Gainesville, Texas, for a lifesaving operation. The plaintiff contracted with the railway to “run a special train ... for the sole purpose of carrying his sick brother to Gainesville.”[12] The dying brother, while on the train, became aware that his connection would be missed. As a result, according to the plaintiff, the brother’s condition “grew worse, and [he] abandoned all hope of life, and died shortly after.”[13] The plaintiff alleged that he “endured great mental pain and suffering on account of the delay and by reason of witnessing the suffering and worry of his sick brother, which was intensified by reason of the delay.”[14]

 The court unsympathetically declared, “No recovery can be had for mental pain and anguish, which is not produced by, connected with, or the result of, some physical suffering or injury, to the person enduring the mental anguish.”[15] It made clear that only mental injury that accompanies specific physical suffering is actionable and therefore compensable. “Damages for pain suffered mentally, as the result of a physical injury, are allowed, for the reason that such mental suffering is necessarily a part of the physical suffering and injury, and is inseparable therefrom.”[16]

The Keiffer court stated:

Whether we personally agree with the rule or not, nevertheless it is the law of Oklahoma that no recovery can be had for mental suffering, which is not produced by, connected with, or the result of physical suffering or injury, to the person enduring the mental anguish. There is no question ... the plaintiff suffered mental pain and anguish by reason of the fact that the train was delayed – his brother was suffering, and he had hoped for relief to his brother on reaching Gainesville – but that mental pain and anguish was disconnected with, and not the result of, any physical suffering or injury sustained by himself. In his amended petition he complains that he suffered with cold while waiting on the track and during the trip, and that he lost sleep on account of the delay; and it is manifest that the mental anguish contemplated by the instruction, under consideration, was not produced by either of these alleged injuries to himself.[17]

The Keiffer court further held, "Damages for mental suffering are not allowable, save as incidental to physical injury, but that: 'In the case of a physical injury, damages for pain suffered, bodily and mentally, are allowed for the reason that such mental suffering is necessarily a part of the physical injury, and inseparable therefrom.'”[18]

MID-CENTURY PROGRESS

Thompson v. Minnis

Emotional distress litigation lulled for a bit until a particularly interesting case was decided in the 1940s, Thompson v. Minnis.[19] In that case, plaintiffs claimed to have suffered mental distress arising from hunger.[20] The plaintiffs requested that the railroad agent issue a ticket to deliver her and her child to Lilbourn, Missouri, but the agent erroneously wrote the destination as Lebanon, Missouri.[21] The young mother arrived with her child at the Lebanon depot, finding herself stranded and unsure of her safety in the unknown town. She was advised by the conductor to stay close to the train station.[22] The plaintiff was “without means with which to purchase food ... [and] ... stayed in or around the depot for about twenty-four hours without food or shelter other than the depot.”[23]

The jury found for the plaintiffs, and the defendant appealed, citing error in the jury instruction “to the effect that plaintiffs could recover for pain, suffering, mental anguish and distress.”[24] The court quickly committed to the premise that “the right to maintain an action may not be predicated upon a mental or emotional disturbance alone.”[25] The court cited 15 Am. Jur. 597, 598:

In law mental anguish is restricted, as a rule, to such mental pain or suffering as arises from an injury or wrong to the person himself, as distinguished from that form of mental suffering which is the accompaniment of sympathy or sorrow for another's suffering or which arises from a contemplation of wrongs committed on the person of another. Pursuant to the rule stated, a husband or wife cannot recover for mental suffering caused by his or her sympathy for the other's suffering. Nor can a parent recover for mental distress and anxiety on account of physical injury sustained by a child or for anxiety for the safety of his child placed in peril by the negligence of another.[26]

It acknowledged that the plaintiff “no doubt ... suffered anguish and anxiety by reason of the fact that her small child was stranded in a strange town, among strangers, and without money to pay her fare to her proper destination.”[27] The court stood firm, however, in holding that “such mental anguish and distress were not produced by, connected with, or the result of any physical suffering or injury to the [plaintiff’s] person.”[28] The plaintiff’s claims for worry and fear were dismissed by the court.

But such was not the case when it came to the plaintiff suffering from hunger! The court explicitly stated that hunger, which the plaintiff “must have suffered ... could well produce mental anguish and anxiety connected with and produced by physical suffering.”[29] Hunger is the “painful sensation or state of exhaustion caused by need of food.”[30] So, as to hunger, the plaintiff was entitled to recover for the emotional distress that accompanied it.

Seidenbach's, Inc. v. Williams

In the 1960s, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma stayed on trend in deciding Seidenbach's, Inc. v. Williams.[31] It coldly tossed a distressed bride’s claims for mental anguish, humiliation and embarrassment, where she suffered no physical injury. In that case, the defendant failed to timely deliver the gown and veil for the plaintiff’s wedding.[32] The disgruntled bride sought retribution in the courts, suing for breach of contract and a whopping $10,000[33] in damages for “mental distress, and/or unhappiness.”[34]

Out of the gate, the court recited the well-settled maxim, “Mental anguish of itself cannot be treated as an independent ground of damages so as to enable a person to maintain an action for that injury alone.”[35] It then made clear that the plaintiff “neither alleged nor proved that [the contract breach] caused her any physical injury, or that her injured, vexed, or perturbed feelings from such breach were caused, connected with, or aggravated, or produced, any such injury or disability.”[36] Ultimately, the court hearkened back to Thompson v. Minnis in holding, “Oklahoma law does not compensate for mental anguish or disturbance alone – it must be part of the physical suffering and inseparable therefrom, as where the mental anguish is superinduced by physical hunger pains.”[37]

In these cases, which dealt exclusively with the negligent infliction of emotional distress, recovery was denied when the mental suffering was unaccompanied by a physical injury. But it was hunger that opened the door for Oklahomans to assert a variety of NIED claims.

Mashunkashey v. Mashunkashey

Meanwhile, case law on IIED began to quietly develop. The first big case was Mashunkashey v. Mashunkashey,[38] where the plaintiff sued the defendant for “inducing plaintiff to enter into the bigamous marriage” and sought compensatory and punitive damages “resulting from humiliation, injury to reputation, etc.”[39] The trial court annulled the marriage and awarded both compensatory and exemplary damages to the plaintiff.[40] In affirming, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma explained that the “prayer for damages was based on the allegation of injured reputation, mental suffering and humiliation ... nothing of a tangible nature upon which to base the pecuniary detriment suffered.”[41] And further, “Injury to reputation will support an action for damages; but mental pain and suffering alone will ordinarily constitute but an element of damages.”[42]

For the first time, however, the court delved into the willful nature of the defendant’s wrong, declaring, “Mental pain and suffering may constitute the basis of an independent action in cases of willful wrong of the character where mental suffering is recognized as the ordinary, natural and proximate result of such wrong.”[43] In the court’s analysis, the defendant’s fraud in inducing the plaintiff into a bigamous marriage constituted a willful wrong from which emotional distress would naturally result. Specifically, mental pain and suffering “constituted a sufficient ground upon which to predicate her actions for deceit.”[44]

In Mashunkashey, the court went a step further in explicating the damages. It opined, “As to mental pain and suffering, the court, or the jury, as the case may be, is authorized to award such a sum as in its discretion will reasonably compensate the plaintiff under the circumstances.”[45] Basically, the amount awarded to an aggrieved sufferer of willful emotional distress (IIED) “is governed largely by the mental reaction of the jury, or court, based upon their knowledge and experience in observing human nature as affected by the particular facts and circumstances.”[46]

Dean v. Chapman

Later, when disco was thriving, the Oklahoma Supreme Court decided Dean v. Chapman,[47] a case about a public autopsy. In Dean, the plaintiff alleged mental injury when the defendant refused to conduct a timely autopsy of her father and then performed the autopsy at an outdoor and public site.[48] The court ultimately held that the act of conducting an autopsy on a partially decomposed body in public view was not of sufficient character to be considered a willful wrong of the nature contemplated by Mashunkashey.[49] (“This Court does not believe that mental anguish arising from the performance of an autopsy pursuant to Court Order in open field where the body is partially decomposed is a case where mental anguish is recognized as an ordinary and natural consequence.”)[50] So apparently, the distress of watching the decomposing body of a loved one being autopsied in public did not meet the court’s standards for an IIED claim.

To justify its decision, the Dean court quoted Section 46 of the Restatement of Torts (Second), Comment D: “The cases thus far decided have found liability only where the defendant’s conduct has been extreme and outrageous. It has not been enough that the defendant has acted with an intent which is tortious or even criminal, or that he has intended to inflict emotional distress, or even that his conduct has been characterized by ‘malice.’”[51] And, further, that liability will be “found only where the conduct has been so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”[52] So the Dean court gave us some idea of the degree and severity of the willful conduct one must suffer in order to bring a surviving IIED claim.

LATE 20TH CENTURY CASES

Williams v. Lee Way Motor Freight, Inc.

The 80s saw a flurry of emotional distress cases in which courts finally ruled that physical suffering was not a prerequisite for such claims. The court, in Williams v. Lee Way Motor Freight, Inc.,[53] explained that Oklahoma continues to follow the Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 46, which provides that “the right to recover damages for emotional distress is not dependent on physical injury," but the court specifically recognized that Oklahomans have rights to “emotional and mental security ... sufficiently important to warrant protection even in the absence of physical suffering.”[54]

Ellington v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Tulsa

Next came Ellington v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Tulsa,[55] addressing a negligent emotional distress claim where the physical injury was, in fact, caused by the plaintiff’s emotional distress. In Ellington, the plaintiff drank from a Coke bottle in which she later observed a foreign object, which she feared was a worm.[56] She immediately became physically ill at the thought that she might have ingested a worm (it turned out to be a piece of candy!).[57] Ms. Ellington’s illness – consisting of nausea, diarrhea and fever – persisted for a month, and she eventually became dehydrated and developed a kidney infection. There was no question that the “plaintiff’s vomiting and illness was due to a psychological reaction.”[58]

The Ellington court ultimately concluded that physical injury need not precede an emotional distress claim. It declared that recovery for mental damages should not depend on whether mental suffering preceded or succeeded the physical suffering.[59] The court surmised that, historically, recovery was not denied to “persons suffering mental anguish which causes physical harm to the person enduring the mental suffering.”[60] Therefore, it ultimately held, “Here the fact that plaintiff’s physical injury was induced by the emotional shock of finding the foreign substance in her drink is not fatal to her recovery – the mental pain and anguish was connected to physical suffering and injury.”[61]

Slaton v. Vansickle

In the 1990s, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma decided Slaton v. Vansickle,[62] wherein a defendant asserted a NIED claim against a co-defendant firearm manufacturer. In Slaton, defendant Mr. Vansickle placed a rifle in the back of his truck, where it discharged, killing a bystander, plaintiff Mr. Slaton’s daughter. He then “left [it] in his truck not knowing of the death until he was contacted a few hours later.”[63] Mr. Vansickle cross-claimed against the firearm manufacturer under what the court determined was the bystander theory. He alleged “great pain of body and mind, emotional and mental distress” as a result of the young girl’s death.[64]

The trial court found for the manufacturer and entered summary judgment on the NIED claim. Our Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s ruling “regarding negligent infliction of emotional distress because Vansickle was in fact arguing bystander theory and Oklahoma law did not entitle him to recover.”[65] Mr. Vansickle did not “have a recognizable cause of action under Oklahoma law.”[66] The court reasoned, “He must have shown a personal injury directly resulting from the gun’s discharge. This he cannot do.”[67] Specifically, Mr. Vansickle’s “injury came about only after learning the gun’s accidental discharge had caused a death, not, because he was injured from the discharge. Vansickle is in truth, arguing nothing different than negligent infliction of emotional distress under some type of bystander theory.”[68]

The court explained it was not any act of the gun manufacturer that led to the plaintiff’s mental suffering, but the true cause of the mental distress was the death of the bystander.[69] This implicated the supervening and intervening cause doctrines. It was sure to reiterate that “a rule long recognized in Oklahoma that recovery for mental anguish is restricted to such mental pain or suffering as arises from an injury or wrong to the person rather than from another’s suffering or wrongs committed against another person.”[70] So the court was firm in holding that bystanders alleging NIED claims have no cognizable cause of action.

Kraszewski v. Baptist Medical Center of Oklahoma, Inc.

But for every statement of black-letter law, there is generally an exception. Just a few years after Slaton was decided, the court carved out an important exception in Kraszewski v. Baptist Medical Center of Oklahoma, Inc., supra. The Kraszewski case dealt with intentional, rather than negligent, infliction of emotional distress claims, which turned on the timing of the injurious event and the alleged distress. There, the plaintiff asserted IIED claims against the defendant drunk driver for the distress of witnessing his wife of 38 years being dragged 60 feet under a truck. His wife ultimately died, but his IIED claims survived.

The court made the important distinction that the plaintiff was not, in fact, a bystander but was a direct victim. The distinguishing fact was that the plaintiff husband was also injured in the collision, although not as fatally as his wife. The plaintiff was “struck in the shoulder, the chest, and the knee and knocked back from the truck.”[71] The court laid out the requisite elements to maintain an IIED claim, stating, “It must be shown that: 1) the plaintiff was directly physically involved in the incident; 2) the plaintiff was damaged from actually viewing the injury to another rather than from learning of the accident later; and 3) a familial or other close personal relationship existed between the plaintiff and the party whose injury gave rise to the plaintiff’s mental anguish.”[72]

The Kraszewski case was particularly egregious in that the Kraszewskis, an elderly couple, were walking hand-in-hand in a Buy For Less parking lot when “the couple’s hands were torn asunder by the impact of the accident, the driver severed their thirty-eight year marriage.”[73] The “accident” to which the court refers was the result of a severely intoxicated driver ripping through the parking lot, striking the couple and dragging the wife while the plaintiff begged the defendant to stop his truck. When the truck finally did stop due to traffic, the plaintiff held his wife “and comforted her until the paramedics arrived.”[74]

The Kraszewski case presented a “novel issue ... whether [the plaintiff] may recover damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from seeing his wife fatally injured.”[75] The Kraszewski court acknowledged, “Oklahoma has never recognized an action for mental suffering caused by witnessing an injury to another.”[76] It reasoned, “However, none of these cases in which we denied recovery involved circumstances in which the plaintiff was actually injured in the accident.”[77] In its analysis, the court made clear that there exist “two categories of parties in actions to collect for emotional distress – ‘bystander’ and ‘direct victim’ plaintiffs. Recovery is based on whether a duty is imposed on the defendant to avoid inflicting emotional harm to the party.”[78]

The court explicitly declared the Kraszewski case “factually distinguishable” from Vansickle because Mr. Vansickle was “not involved directly in the accident,” while Mr. Kraszewski “was a direct victim – he was a part of the accident which caused his mental suffering.”[79] It further distinguished Vansickle by the fact that the aggrieved there did not observe the shooting of the girl, while in the Kraszewski case, the husband viewed his wife’s dragging and was “subjected to the same fear and danger which caused injury to the other party.”[80] So the husband was a direct victim of the drunk driver defendant, and the defendant, therefore, owed a duty to the plaintiff not to run him down in a grocery store parking lot in broad daylight.

The court put it a bit more eloquently by stating that Kraszewski established that the defendant “breached his duty to the husband when he negligently struck and injured him with his truck.” Thus, the NIED claims survived.[81] Kraszewski further established that he 1) was directly physically involved in the incident, 2) was emotionally damaged by viewing his wife’s injury in real time and 3) had a close personal relationship with his wife.

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS

Ridings v. Maze

The Ridings v. Maze[82] case brought us into the 21st century. In Ridings, a young child exited the school bus only to be struck and killed by a passing car. The plaintiffs – the decedent’s parents and siblings – witnessed the horrific death of their loved one.[83] They asserted both NIED and IIED claims against the driver and the school. “The dispositive issue ... center[ed] on whether the bystander plaintiffs, who were not involved in the auto-pedestrian traffic accident but say they witnessed it from the window of their house, can recover against defendants for infliction of emotional distress.”[84] The court decided they could not and dismissed the emotional distress claims.

The court’s decision again centered on whether the alleged mental distress sufferers were bystanders or direct victims. In Ridings, the court determined the plaintiffs to be bystanders and, once more, used the Vansickle case for distinction. “Unlike the husband in Kraszewski, the driver herein did not physically harm Plaintiffs, nor were Plaintiffs even outside or in harm’s way.”[85] “Plaintiffs’ claims fall under Kraszewski’s definition of a ‘bystander’ because the basis for liability rests solely on the fact that they witnessed the accident, not that any defendant physically injured them.”[86] The court concluded that the facts were much more in line with Slaton, where the “Plaintiff’s emotional distress ‘resulted from the wrong to another’ – the driver injuring their child.”[87] Thus, there could be no recovery for either NIED or IIED claims asserted by plaintiffs.

Hutchinson v. City of Okla. City

But what is emotional distress anyway? Federal courts, including those in Oklahoma, have helped guide us in what exactly constitutes emotional distress. One important case in Oklahoma’s Western District is Hutchinson v. City of Okla. City.[88] In that case, a city employee sued the city for NIED arising out of her discrimination claims. The plaintiff’s claim was denied on other grounds, but it did explore what suffering meets the threshold for emotional distress claims. In doing so, the court denied the city’s argument that the NIED “claim must fail because she did not allege a physical injury, as required by Ellington.”[89] The court, however, made clear that “‘migraines and stress that affected her work and her ability to sleep’ and ‘[plaintiff] also broke her molar because of her grinding her teeth’” were “all physical manifestations of emotional distress.”[90]

Wilson v. Muckala

The Hutchinson court harkened back to a 10th Circuit case arising out of Tulsa County, Wilson v. Muckala.[91] In Wilson, the plaintiff’s sexual harassment action included a claim for NIED. The court denied it because it found a “lack of evidence of physical injury,” explaining, “Oklahoma law obligated Ms. Wilson to provide proof of some physical injury, whether incurred contemporaneously with her emotional injury, or whether as a direct consequence of her emotional injury.”[92] However, it recognized that the plaintiff did, in fact, suffer emotional distress in that “she described increasing feelings of humiliation, intimidation, very, very strong subjective unpleasant feelings as well as increasing depression. She had difficulty sleeping, crying, sad, gained weight, lost interest in working, felt not safe working as a nurse.”[93] Other Oklahoma courts have characterized emotional distress as “fright, horror, grief, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, anger, chagrin, disappointment, worry, and nausea,” to name a few.[94] Also, emotional distress has been manifested where the sufferer “cried [and] lost weight, had a rash all over her arms and legs ... and would shake.”[95]

CONCLUSION

In sum, over a century of Oklahoma jurisprudence on emotional distress has yielded two consistent principles: First, claims for NIED must be brought within the framework of a broader negligence cause of action – they do not stand alone; second, whether the claim is based on negligence or intentional infliction, Oklahoma law generally requires some form of physical manifestation of the distress, either preceding or resulting from the emotional injury. So if your client insists they’ve been wronged and seeks to recover for emotional distress, the answer to whether they can bring a viable claim remains that it depends. The emotional harm must be more than abstract; it must be legally cognizable.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kindra N. Dotson is a founding partner of Renaissance Legal Solutions and an experienced trial lawyer. She is a member of the Oklahoma Association for Justice, the Oklahoma Employment Lawyers Association and the OBA Women in Law Section.

 

 

 

 

 

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ENDNOTES

[1] 1911 OK 216, ¶3, 115 P. 879.

[2] The Choteau opinion cites to prior "telegraph" cases from Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Iowa and Kentucky, so it is uncertain to which "telegraph" case the court refers to here.

[3] Choteau at ¶38.

[4] Kraszewski v. Baptist Medical Center of Oklahoma, Inc., 1996 OK 141, ¶¶1, 13, 916 P.2d 241; Breeden v. League Services Corp., 1978 OK 27, ¶¶6-12, 575 P.2d 1374.

[5] See Okla. Uniform Jury Instruction-Civil 20.1.

[6] Id.

[7] Id. at ¶1, 879.

[8] Id.

[9] Id. at ¶¶37-38.

[10] Id. at ¶¶34, 34 [citations omitted].

[11] 1915 OK 381, 150 P. 1026.

[12] Id. at 1027.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Id. at 1028 [citation omitted].

[19] 1949 OK 29, 202 P.2d 981.

[20] Id. at 986.

[21] Id. at 983.

[22] Id.

[23] Id.

[24] Id. at 984.

[25] Id. at 985.

[26] Id.

[27] Thompson at 985.

[28] Id.

[29] Id. at 986.

[30] Id.

[31] 1961 OK 77, 361 P.2d 185.

[32] Id.

[33] The 2024 equivalent is approximately $105,000 according to https://bit.ly/4osjQna (accessed April 22, 2025).

[34] Id.

[35] Id. at 187 (quoting Nail v. McCullough & Lee, 1923 OK 102, 212 P. 981).

[36] Id.

[37] Id. at 188.

[38] 1941 OK 113, 113 P.2d 190.

[39] Id. at 190.

[40] Id.

[41] Id. at 191.

[42] Id. (emphasis added).

[43] Id. (emphasis added).

[44] Id.

[45] Id. at 192.

[46] Id.

[47] 1976 OK 153, 556 P.2d 257.

[48] Id. at 257.

[49] Id. at 260.

[50] Id.

[51] Id. at 261.

[52] Id.

[53] 1984 OK 64, 688 P.2d 1294, 1296.

[54] Id.

[55] 1986 OK 11, 717 P.2d 109.

[56] Id.

[57] Id.

[58] Id. at 110.

[59] Id. at 111.

[60] Id.

[61] Id. See also Chandler v. Denton, 1987 OK 38, 741 P.2d 855, 866 (recognizing that physical injury is not required for emotional distress claims).

[62] 1994 OK 39, 872 P.2d 929.

[63] Id. at 930.

[64] Id.

[65] Id. at 929.

[66] Id. at 930.

[67] Id. at 931.

[68] Id. (emphasis in original).

[69] Id. at 931.

[70] Id. (emphasis in original).

[71] Id.

[72] Id. at 242.

[73] Id. at 247.

[74] Id. at 244.

[75] Id. at 242-43.

[76] Id. at 245.

[77] Id.

[78] Id. at 246.

[79] Id. at 247.

[80] Id. at 247-48.

[81] Id. at 247.

[82] 2018 OK 18, 414 P.3d 835.

[83] Id.

[84] Id. at 837.

[85] Id. at 838.

[86] Id. at 839.

[87] Id. at 838-39.

[88] 919 F. Supp. 2d 1163, 1183 (W.D. Okla. 2013).

[89] Id.

[90] Id.

[91] 303 F.3d 1207, 1213 (10th Cir. 2002).

[92] Id.

[93] Id.

[94] Computer Publications, Inc. v. Walton, 2002 OK 50, 49 P.3d 732, 736.

[95] Id.