Wounded Feelings Law and Legal Definition
Wounded feelings are feelings arising from insults, indignity, or humiliation. In short, wounded feelings are injuries arising from one’s own thoughts and actions. Examples of wounded feelings are anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, fear of the past or future, resentment, emptiness, and aloneness. Wounded feeling is distinct from the injury arising from usual mental pain and suffering consequent to physical harm.
In Blanchard v. Westview Cemetery, Inc., 133 Ga. App. 262 (Ga. Ct. App. 1974), the court observed that “The law does not allow a man to be compensated twice for his wounded feelings; and the jury cannot, after giving him the sum which their enlightened consciences tell him will compensate him for wounded feelings, give an additional sum under the head of exemplary damages, for the purpose of compensating him for wounded feelings. If, in the event, both compensatory and exemplary damages may be recovered for wounded feelings, the exemplary damages should be assessed for the purpose of deterring the wrongdoer, and not for the purpose of compensating the plaintiff.”
