Fear Must Be “Genuine and Serious”

The majority would allow such awards, but with the “important reservation” that a plaintiff must “prove that his alleged fear is genuine and serious.” Ante, at 19. There is no basis in our FELA jurisprudence for establishing this burden of proof, and it would be a difficult standard for judges to enforce. The Court has rejected the notion that review for “genuineness” could ameliorate the threat of unlimited and unpredictable liability. See Gottshall, 512 U. S., at 552. In explaining its skepticism, the Court observed:

“Such a fact-specific test . . . would be bound to lead to
haphazard results. Judges would be forced to make highly
subjective determinations concerning the authenticity of
claims for emotional injury, which are far less susceptible
to objective medical proof than are their physical
counterparts. To the extent the genuineness test could limit
potential liability, it could do so only inconsistently. . . . In
the context of claims for intangible harms brought under a
negligence statute, we find such an arbitrary result unacceptable.” Ibid.

The Court’s response to the possibility of speculative awards is instead to adopt common-law rules restricting the classes of plaintiffs eligible to seek recovery and the types of emotional distress for which recovery is available. See Ibid.; see also Metro-North, 521 U. S., at 436. This is not to say that allegations of emotional distress need not be genuine and serious in order to warrant compensation, but review for genuineness alone does little or nothing to prevent capricious outcomes. Instead, the responsibility of today’s Court is not to review whether an individual claim alleging fear of cancer is genuine and severe, but to adopt a rule that reconciles the need to provide compensation for deserving claimants with the concerns that speculative damages awards will exhaust the resources available for recovery.