Torts involving emotional distress evolved over the course of 20th Century as courts and the restatements of tort law came to acknowledge that there is this species of wrong where the harm suffered by a plaintiff is not a personal injury or property damage, but instead is emotional distress; is a creation of distress in one's mental wellbeing. And so these torts involving emotional distress come in two guises. One is intentional infliction of emotional distress where a defendant acts with the intent, or recklessly acts to cause emotional distress; and then negligent infliction of emotional distress, which is a species of negligence where one acts carelessly, and gives rise to emotional distress on the part of a plaintiff. This has been a long running dispute about kind of what kinds of evidence a plaintiff has to bring to show that they have suffered severe emotional distress. Some jurisdictions have required that a plaintiff have a kind of physical manifestation of the emotional distress that they've suffered. But in other kinds of contexts, it's where someone has had emotional distress that is so severe that, for example, they've missed work, or they've become severely depressed, or have suffered other kinds of mental health issues as a result of a course of conduct on the part of the defendant. And in the end, it's left to, in theory at least, a jury to determine whether the emotional distress that the plaintiff alleges is so severe that it can satisfy the elements of either intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress. It is true that claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress are hard to prevail on. There's a tendency sometimes, because we read cases in first year torts where a plaintiff has won a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress, that we think the plaintiffs are often able to satisfy the elements, but that, at least statistically, is not true. There are lots of cases involving what to most appearances would be rather egregious forms of conduct, but where the plaintiff's cause of action still falls short of satisfying the elements of either intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress. Of course, burden of proof is always on the plaintiff as an initial matter to prove the elements of a tort by a preponderance of the evidence. But intentional infliction of emotional distress is one area where courts have often, at the dismissal or summary judgment stage, been reluctant to let cases go forward because of perceived inadequacies in the plaintiff's ability to show outrageous conduct and severe emotional distress. And so I often have asked students in class, you know, do you think this is a good rule or a bad rule? And it's an opportunity for people to kind of take their assessment about what they think the objectives of the tort system should be. So maybe we should make claims for emotional distress easier to prove so that, you know, the random practical joke that causes someone distress should be actionable as a tort. But for the most part, courts are very reluctant to adopt that view.