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- Embed this noticePlus, in most cases entional distress has to arise from some separate cognizable injury. There are exceptions were it can be a direct action, but it's usually tied to some heightened or fiduciary duty, e.g. the hospital gives you the wrong baby.
So here, and unless that state has some exception, I assume the injury would have to be from the defamation in order to tie in an emotional distress claim. Yet, they're not claiming the damage caused by the defamation cause their distress, but rather some other guy, i.e. they're claiming the emotional distress is the injury cause by the defamation, not that it arose from the injury caused by the defamation. It's a fine difference, but if the difference goes, then defamation simply becomes a vehicle for an direct emotional distress tort.
This would still be the case even if the statements were defamatory. Assuming they were, they may well have a claim to emotional distress caused by the injury, the acts of this rando not being one.