SEPTEMBER 2025 | 27 THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. 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 $10,00033 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 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.
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