Cite as: 521 U. S. 424 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
Damages § 90 (1935)); see also Restatement (Second) of Torts § 924(c) (1977); J. Stein, Stein on Personal Injury Damages § 5.18 (2d ed. 1991). No one has argued that any different principle would apply in the case of a plaintiff whose "injury" consists of a disease, a symptom, or those sorts of emotional distress that fall within the FELA's definition of "injury." See Part II, supra. Much of the Second Circuit's opinion suggests it intended only to apply this basic principle of the law of damages. See, e. g., 79 F. 3d, at 1342 ("[T]his case turns upon whether . . . emotional harm . . . is an injury compensable under FELA"); id., at 1347 (monitoring costs are a "traditional element of tort damages"). Insofar as that is so, Part II of our opinion, holding that the emotional distress at issue here is not a compensable "injury," requires reversal on this point as well.
Other portions of the Second Circuit's opinion, however, indicate that it may have rested this portion of its decision upon a broader ground, namely, that medical monitoring costs themselves represent a separate negligently caused economic "injury," 45 U. S. C. § 51, for which a negligently exposed FELA plaintiff (including a plaintiff without disease or symptoms) may recover to the extent that the medical monitoring costs that a reasonable physician would prescribe for the plaintiff exceed the medical monitoring costs that "would have been prescribed in the absence of [the] exposure." 79 F. 3d, at 1347 (citation omitted). This portion of the opinion, when viewed in light of Buckley's straightforward claim for an "amount of money" sufficient to "compensate" him for "future medical monitoring expenses," Plaintiff's Proposed Charges to the Jury 25, Record, Doc. 33, suggests the existence of an ordinary, but separate, tort law cause of action permitting (as tort law ordinarily permits) the recovery of medical cost damages in the form of a lump sum, see Stein, supra, at §§ 5.1 and 5.18, and irrespective of insurance, Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 920A(2). As so characterized, the Second Circuit's holding, in our
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