180
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
grees of concern about cancer. This evidence of injury and the compensation awarded is recited here not "to reweigh evidence based on information not presented at trial," ante, at 155, n. 15, or "to judge the sufficiency of the evidence or the reasonableness of the damages awards," ante, at 159. Rather, it is instructive as to what results in a single case when a jury is charged with translating into dollar amounts confusing and contested evidence about the nature of a complicated harm. It demonstrates the speculative, unreasoned kind of award generated when a jury is presented vivid testimony about the agony of cancer, provided expert evidence that a person's chances of developing that cancer have increased, but admonished that only the fear of that cancer— and not the cancer itself, or a heightened risk of developing cancer—is compensable.
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 157. 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.
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