Can you sue for
emotional distress?

By Jonathan Kleiman, Barrister & Solicitor · Published June 2026

"They put me through hell — can I sue them for the stress?" I hear some version of this almost every week. Someone has been treated badly: a contractor who vanished, a customer who refused to pay, a business partner who lied, a landlord who would not return calls. They are angry, they are anxious, they lost sleep, and they want the court to make the other side pay for what it did to them emotionally. The instinct is completely human. The legal answer is harder.

Here is the honest version, up front: in most ordinary disputes, you cannot sue simply because you were upset, frustrated, stressed, or had your feelings hurt. Those reactions are real, but on their own they are not a claim a court will compensate. Courts award money for proven losses, and "I was stressed" is not, by itself, a loss the law recognizes. Emotional-distress damages do exist in Ontario, but they live in a few narrow corners of the law, each with a genuinely high bar.

Below I will walk through what the law actually allows, the three routes where distress damages can be available, the evidence you would need, and the mistakes I see people make when they try to bolt a "stress" figure onto an otherwise ordinary Small Claims Court case. None of this is legal advice about your specific situation, and nothing here is a promise that you will recover anything — every case turns on its own facts. But after years of having this conversation, I would rather set honest expectations than let someone chase a number the court is unlikely to award.

What "suing for emotional distress" really means

The first thing I do is reframe the question, because the way people ask it usually contains a misunderstanding. Small Claims Court awards money for proven losses. If a contractor took your deposit and walked off, your loss is the deposit and the extra cost to finish the work — that is concrete and provable. If a customer never paid an invoice, your loss is the invoice. The court can measure those things and order them paid.

"Emotional distress," by contrast, is not a loss in the same way. The stress, worry, and anger that come with a dispute are the ordinary background noise of any disagreement. If every upset feeling were compensable, every lawsuit would carry a distress claim, and they do not — because the law treats ordinary upset as something that does not, on its own, give rise to a free-standing claim.

So the real question is not "can I be paid for being upset?" The real question is "do my facts fit one of the narrow legal categories where the law will compensate genuine mental injury?" That is a much more demanding test, and most everyday disputes do not meet it. When someone asks me whether they can sue for distress, my honest first answer is usually a careful "probably not on its own — let us see if there is a recognized wrong underneath it."

Why ordinary upset is not, by itself, a claim

People sometimes assume that if the conduct was bad enough to make them feel awful, the feeling itself must be worth money. The law does not work that way. It draws a line between the normal frustration, anxiety, and disappointment that accompany life and legal disputes, and a genuine, serious injury to a person's mental health. The first is not compensable on its own. The second can be — but only where a recognized legal route applies and the injury is real and provable. Most "emotional distress" claims fail precisely because they sit on the wrong side of that line.

From my experience

From my experience, the people who come to me wanting distress damages fall into two camps, and they need very different conversations. The larger camp has a perfectly good underlying claim — an unpaid debt, a broken contract — and wants to add a "stress and inconvenience" amount on top because the whole ordeal was genuinely miserable. With them, my job is to gently separate the recoverable part (the actual money owed, plus the costs they are entitled to) from the part the court will almost certainly disregard. Once they understand that distinction, most are relieved to focus on what they can actually win.

The smaller camp has been through something that really does feel different in kind — sustained, targeted, outrageous conduct that left a lasting mark. Here I slow down and ask harder questions. Is there a paper trail showing how extreme the conduct was? Is there medical or therapy evidence of a real injury, not just a bad few weeks? Did it affect their ability to work or function? Those cases are rare, and even then I am careful never to promise a result, because the bar is high and Small Claims is not built for serious psychological-injury litigation.

What I will not do is encourage someone to inflate an ordinary claim with a large distress number. It does not help them. A judge sees it as padding, it can undermine credibility on the parts of the case that are genuinely strong, and it sets the client up for disappointment. Honesty early saves frustration later.

What the law generally says: the three narrow routes

When distress damages are available in Ontario, they almost always come through one of three recognized routes. I want to explain each plainly, because understanding them is how you tell a potential claim from wishful thinking. The through-line is the same in all three: there must be a real underlying wrong, and there must be evidence of genuine impact — not just a feeling.

Route 1 — Intentional infliction of mental suffering (a tort)

This is a recognized civil wrong, and it is the route people imagine when they picture suing someone for what they put them through. But it is deliberately hard to make out. Generally you have to prove three elements:

• Flagrant or outrageous conduct. Not rudeness, not a broken promise, not a hard-nosed business dispute — conduct that genuinely goes beyond the bounds of what is tolerable.
• Conduct calculated to produce harm. The defendant intended to cause the harm, or knew that harm was substantially certain to result from what they did.
• A visible and provable illness. Not ordinary upset — an actual, demonstrable injury to your health, which generally means medical or therapy evidence.

All three have to be present. In my experience this is where most attempts collapse: the conduct, while genuinely unpleasant, was not outrageous in the legal sense, or there is no provable illness, only understandable distress. It is a real route, but a narrow one.

Route 2 — Negligence causing serious mental injury

The second route arises where someone owed you a duty of care, was careless, and that carelessness caused you a genuine mental injury. There is an important nuance here: the Supreme Court of Canada has said you do not strictly need a formally diagnosed psychiatric illness to recover. That sounds encouraging, but read the rest of the test before you get there.

The injury still has to be serious and prolonged and must rise above the ordinary annoyances, anxieties and fears that come with everyday life. Trivial or transient upset does not qualify. So while you may not need a specific diagnosis on paper, you absolutely need evidence of a real, lasting impact — and in practice, medical records, therapy notes, and objective signs of how your functioning was affected are what carry the day. The absence of a required diagnosis is not a shortcut; it is just one less technical hurdle on a path that still demands genuine, provable injury.

Route 3 — Mental-distress damages in contract

The third route is for breaches of contract, and it is narrower than people hope. As a general matter, when an ordinary commercial contract is broken, the law compensates your financial losses, not your feelings. You can read more about how that ordinarily works in my guide to breach of contract damages in Ontario. Distress damages on a contract are the exception, and they tend to arise in two situations.

• Peace-of-mind contracts. Where an object of the contract was to provide peace of mind or an intangible benefit — certain insurance, vacation, or funeral arrangements are the classic examples — distress can be a foreseeable result of breaking it, and may be compensable.
• Aggravated damages for bad-faith conduct. Where the breaching party behaved in a bad-faith or high-handed way in how they broke the contract, a court may award aggravated damages reflecting that conduct.

Most ordinary contracts — an unpaid invoice, a botched renovation, a supplier who let you down — do not fall into either category. If you are not sure whether you even have a contract claim to begin with, start with what counts as a breach of contract in Ontario, and treat any distress component as a long shot layered on top.

Common situations I see

Most distress questions reach me in one of a few recurring shapes. Recognizing which one you are in tells you a lot about whether the claim has legs.

Adding "stress" to a debt or contract claim. This is by far the most common. The underlying claim is solid — money is owed, a contract was broken — and the person wants to add a figure for the aggravation of dealing with it. Almost always, the recoverable part is the actual loss, and the distress add-on goes nowhere. I cover the broader limits on what you can and cannot sue for in can I sue anyone for anything in Small Claims Court, and the short version applies here: a real, provable loss is the thing the court will pay for.

Harassment-type conduct. Sometimes the conduct is genuinely targeted and ugly — repeated abusive messages, a campaign of intimidation, sustained mistreatment. This is the situation where one of the recognized routes, usually intentional infliction of mental suffering, might come into play. But even here, the outrageous-conduct and provable-illness requirements still have to be met, and the right forum may not be Small Claims Court at all. Harassment can also engage the police, a human-rights process, or a workplace channel, and the strongest remedy is not always a damages claim.

The genuinely serious case. Occasionally someone has suffered a real, documented mental injury from another's conduct. These are the cases that may fit a recognized route — but they are also the cases where I am most candid that Small Claims, with its streamlined procedure and monetary limit, is not well suited to serious psychological-injury litigation. Sometimes the honest advice is that a different forum, or a frank assessment of whether the claim is worth pursuing at all, serves the person better.

When emotional-distress damages ARE possible

Let me put the three routes together in plain terms, because the point is not that distress is never compensable — it is that the door is narrow, and you have to walk through one of these specific openings.

Through an intentional tort. If someone engaged in flagrant, outrageous conduct that was calculated to harm you — they intended it, or knew harm was substantially certain — and it caused a visible and provable illness, you may have a claim for intentional infliction of mental suffering. The conduct and the consequence both have to be extreme. A merely difficult or unpleasant counterpart does not meet this.

Through negligence. If someone who owed you a duty of care was careless and caused a mental injury that is serious and prolonged — rising well above everyday annoyance and anxiety — you may have a claim even without a formal psychiatric diagnosis, though you will still need strong evidence of a genuine, lasting impact.

Through certain contracts. If you had a peace-of-mind or intangible-benefit contract, or the other side broke an ordinary contract in a bad-faith, high-handed way, distress or aggravated damages may be on the table. Most ordinary commercial contracts will not qualify.

Notice the common thread: in every route, there is a real underlying wrong plus proof of genuine impact. Take either of those away and you are back to ordinary upset, which is not a claim. And even where a route applies, these damages are hard to prove, usually modest, and never guaranteed.

The evidence that actually matters

If you are going to pursue distress damages, the case will be won or lost on evidence — and you need two distinct kinds. This is the same discipline that wins any case; I dig into the general principle in my guide on what evidence wins in Small Claims Court, but distress claims demand it even more, because the injury is invisible.

Evidence of the wrong. You have to be able to show the conduct, and for the intentional route, show that it was outrageous and aimed at harming you. That means a paper trail — messages, emails, recordings where lawful, witnesses, documents — that lets a judge see the conduct for what it was, not just hear your description of it.

Evidence of a real injury. This is where most claims live or die. You generally have to prove an actual injury, not just that you were understandably upset. That usually means:

• Medical or therapy records — a diagnosis, treatment history, or notes from a doctor, counsellor, or therapist.
• Impact on daily life — concrete effects on your ability to work, sleep, or function, ideally documented rather than just described.
• A timeline tying the injury to the defendant's conduct, so the cause-and-effect is clear.

The weaker the injury evidence, the more a claim looks like ordinary frustration dressed up as injury — and a judge will treat it that way. Bare assertion almost never carries a distress claim.

Common mistakes

The same handful of missteps come up again and again, and each one tends to sink a claim that might otherwise have had a chance — or to drag down an otherwise solid case.

Tacking on a big "emotional distress" number with no evidence. Writing "$10,000 for stress" on a claim form does not create a $10,000 loss. Without a recognized legal route and real proof of injury, that figure will be ignored or struck, and it can make the parts of your case that are genuinely strong look exaggerated.

Confusing upset with injury. Being angry, anxious, or sleepless during a dispute is normal — and not compensable on its own. The law looks for a serious, provable injury that rises above everyday distress. Treating ordinary upset as if it were a medical injury is the single most common error I see.

Picking the wrong forum. Some genuinely serious psychological-injury situations do not belong in Small Claims at all. Forcing a serious claim into a streamlined court with a monetary cap can shortchange it. Part of getting this right is knowing when Small Claims is the venue and when it is not.

Inflating the claim and losing credibility. When a judge sees a padded distress figure bolted onto a clean debt, it colours how they read everything else. If you are weighing whether a modest claim is even worth pursuing, that calculus matters — I work through it in is it worth suing for $2,000 in Small Claims, and an unrealistic distress add-on rarely improves the math.

What happens in court

If a distress claim reaches a deputy judge, two things have to be true for it to succeed, and the judge will be looking for both. First, there has to be a recognized legal basis — one of the routes above. A judge cannot award money for distress just because they feel sympathy; the claim has to fit a category the law recognizes. Second, there has to be proof — of the wrong and of a genuine injury.

In practice, what I see is that a judge will readily award the provable, concrete losses — the unpaid debt, the cost to fix the problem — and then look hard at any distress component, usually with skepticism, because so many are unsupported. If the evidence of a real injury is thin, the distress portion tends to go nowhere even when the rest of the case succeeds. The court is not hostile to genuine mental-injury claims; it is simply demanding about them, and it has seen many that do not hold up.

If you are going to be in this position at all, it helps to understand the mechanics of bringing a claim generally. My walk-through on how to sue in Small Claims Court in Ontario covers the procedure, and a realistic view of what it costs to sue someone in Ontario is worth reading before you commit time and money to a claim whose distress component may not survive.

Settlement considerations

Distress is one area where settlement deserves special thought, because the courtroom outcome is so uncertain. In a negotiation, the other side cannot be sure a judge will dismiss the distress component, and that uncertainty sometimes creates a little room to resolve the whole matter for a sensible number — even though the same component might not survive a trial. I do not overstate this. A weak distress claim does not magically become valuable at the bargaining table. But the genuine unpredictability of these claims can, occasionally, support a reasonable settlement of the overall dispute.

Where the conflict is ongoing or relational — a former partner, a neighbour, a business associate you may cross paths with again — there is also real value in resolving it without a public, drawn-out fight. A facilitated negotiation can address the parts of a situation a damages award never touches, like an apology, a clean break, or terms that let both sides move on. When that is the goal, a mediation or arbitration process is sometimes a better fit than a contested trial. And for higher-stakes commercial disputes that have spilled into this territory, a commercial litigation assessment can help you weigh whether to fight, settle, or walk away.

Key takeaways

• Ordinary upset is not a claim. Stress, frustration, and hurt feelings are not, on their own, compensable. Courts pay for proven losses, and "I was stressed" is not a free-standing loss.
• There are only a few narrow routes. Distress damages generally come through intentional infliction of mental suffering, negligence causing serious mental injury, or certain peace-of-mind or bad-faith contract claims — each with a high bar.
• You must prove a real injury. A visible, provable illness or a serious and prolonged injury rising above everyday anxiety — usually backed by medical or therapy evidence — not just understandable upset.
• Most "distress" add-ons fail. Tacking a stress figure onto a debt or contract claim almost always goes nowhere and can undermine the strong parts of your case.
• No promises, and usually modest at best. Even where available, these damages are hard to prove and tend to be modest, and Small Claims is not well suited to serious psychological-injury cases.

Frequently asked questions

Can I sue for emotional distress in Small Claims Court in Ontario?

Sometimes, but rarely, and almost never on its own. Ordinary upset, stress, frustration, or hurt feelings are not, by themselves, a claim a court will compensate. The court compensates proven losses, and "I was stressed" is not a free-standing loss. Emotional-distress damages are available only through a few narrow legal routes — an intentional tort, negligence causing serious mental injury, or certain contracts meant to provide peace of mind — and each has a high bar. In my experience most attempts to sue purely for distress fail, so I always look first for a recognized underlying wrong.

Can I add "stress" or "inconvenience" to my Small Claims claim?

You can write almost anything in a claim, but writing it does not make it recoverable. Tacking a "stress and inconvenience" figure onto an unpaid invoice or a contract dispute usually goes nowhere, because everyday frustration is the ordinary backdrop of any disagreement, not a compensable loss. A judge will generally award your actual, provable damages — the money you are owed, the cost to fix a problem — and disregard a round number bolted on for upset. If you genuinely suffered a real, provable injury, that is a different and much narrower conversation, and it needs real evidence.

What is intentional infliction of mental suffering?

It is a tort — a recognized civil wrong — and one of the few routes to distress damages, but it sets a deliberately high bar. To succeed you generally have to prove three things: conduct that was flagrant or outrageous; that was calculated to produce harm, meaning the defendant intended the harm or knew it was substantially certain to result; and that actually caused a visible and provable illness. Rudeness, a broken promise, or a hard-nosed business dispute does not qualify. It is reserved for genuinely extreme conduct with a genuinely serious consequence, and it is hard to prove.

Do I need a doctor's note or a diagnosis to sue for emotional distress?

It depends on the route. For intentional infliction of mental suffering you generally must show a visible and provable illness, so medical or therapy evidence is usually essential. For a negligence claim the Supreme Court of Canada has said you do not strictly need a formal psychiatric diagnosis, but the injury must be serious and prolonged and rise above the ordinary annoyances and anxieties of everyday life — and proving that almost always benefits from medical records, therapy notes, or other objective evidence. In practice, the stronger your documented impact, the better. Bare assertion rarely succeeds.

Can I get mental-distress damages for a breach of contract?

Occasionally, but most ordinary commercial contracts do not support them. The main situation is where an object of the contract was to provide peace of mind or an intangible benefit — think certain insurance, vacation, or funeral arrangements — so that distress was a foreseeable result of breaking it. A second route is aggravated damages where the breaching party acted in bad faith or in a high-handed way. A routine unpaid invoice or a botched ordinary service contract usually will not qualify. I treat contract distress damages as the exception, not something to expect in a typical breach.

How much can I get for emotional distress in Small Claims?

I will not quote a figure, because there is no set amount and promising one would be misleading. Even where these damages are legally available, they tend to be modest, they depend heavily on the evidence of genuine impact, and they require a real underlying wrong first. Small Claims can award them within its monetary limit, but it is not well suited to serious psychological-injury cases. In my experience, anyone going in expecting a large number for distress alone is usually disappointed. The realistic plan is to prove your actual losses and treat any distress component as uncertain.

What evidence do I need for an emotional-distress claim?

You need evidence of two things: the wrong, and the impact. For the wrong, that means documenting the outrageous or bad-faith conduct — messages, recordings, witnesses, a paper trail. For the impact, you generally need to show a real injury, not just upset: medical or therapy records, a diagnosis or treatment history, time off work, and concrete effects on your daily life and functioning. The weaker the impact evidence, the more a claim looks like ordinary frustration dressed up as injury. I always tell clients that an emotional-distress claim is won or lost on the strength of that proof.

Is harassment a Small Claims Court matter?

It can intersect with one, but "harassment" is not a simple money claim you drop into Small Claims. Some harassing conduct may support a recognized tort like intentional infliction of mental suffering, which still requires outrageous conduct and a visible, provable illness. Other situations are better addressed through the police, a human-rights process, workplace channels, or a different court entirely. Before treating harassment as a Small Claims case, I look hard at whether the facts fit a recognized cause of action and whether this is even the right forum. Often the strongest remedy is not a damages claim at all.

Can I sue for emotional distress on top of a debt I'm owed?

You can pursue the debt, and you should — that is a clean, provable loss. But layering an emotional-distress amount on top of a straightforward debt almost never works. Being owed money is stressful, but the stress of a normal collection dispute is not a separate compensable injury. Unless the debtor's conduct crosses into something genuinely outrageous and caused a real, provable illness, the distress add-on tends to be ignored or struck. My usual advice is to focus on recovering the actual amount owed and the costs you are entitled to, and not to inflate the claim with a distress figure.

Should I get a lawyer for an emotional-distress claim?

For a clean debt or contract claim you may not need one, but an emotional-distress component raises the difficulty sharply, because the law is narrow and the evidence demands are high. A short consultation can tell you honestly whether your facts fit one of the recognized routes or whether you are about to spend time and money chasing something the court will not award. That candour is worth a lot. If the claim is borderline, advice early can save you from an expensive disappointment, and if it is genuinely strong, it helps you build it properly from the start.

Final thoughts

"Can I sue for emotional distress?" has a short answer and a long one, and the honest version sits in between. The short answer most people hope for — "yes, they hurt you, so they owe you" — is not how Ontario law works. The longer answer is that distress damages are real but narrow: they require a recognized legal wrong and genuine, provable injury, and even then they are hard to win and usually modest. For the everyday dispute where someone simply wants to be paid for the aggravation, the answer is almost always no.

That is not meant to discourage anyone with a genuine claim. If your situation involves truly outrageous conduct and a real, documented injury, the law does provide a path, and it is worth getting proper advice on whether your facts fit it. But far more often, the useful move is to focus on the loss you can actually prove — the debt, the contract, the concrete harm — and to be clear-eyed that the distress component is uncertain at best. Setting that expectation honestly is, in my experience, the most valuable thing I can do for someone in this position.

If you want a candid read on whether your situation supports a distress claim or is better handled another way, call 416-554-1639 or book a free consultation. A short conversation can usually tell you whether the law is on your side — and, just as importantly, when it is not.