Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim and What Kinds of Damages Can You Get?

So the question is ‘who can file a wrongful death case?’, and ‘what type of damages do you get in a wrongful death case?’ First, a wrongful death case itself requires an estate. And whoever the administrator or executive of that estate is, is the one who files for the estate’s damages. But there are also damages for some surviving family members. Depending on the state that you’re in, you may be limited in different ways, but usually the surviving spouse and surviving minor children will always have claims. Sometimes, surviving children who are adults but who are fully dependent, like for example, if they have Down syndrome or something like that, they also have claims. And those are called Loss of Consortium claims. And except in the example of a minor or someone who’s dependent because they’re not able to make decisions on their own – those people are able to file claims on their own. They don’t have to do it through the estate. They’re able to hire their own attorney. If you do have a wrongful death claim for a spouse that has died, and you’re the administrator of the estate, you also have minor children, you can sign on behalf of everyone to file the claim. And sometimes, that’s the simplest way to do it, but certainly, I’ve seen every permutation that there is. Now what types of Damages can you get? Well, first of all, all the other people – the spouse, the minor children, the adult children with dependencies, etc. They have what’s called Loss of Consortium claims, and that’s defined as the loss of love, companionship, support, etc. Actually measuring what those damages are or describing those damages in real terms is a very, very uniquely personal thing for each situation. I have heard Loss of Consortium damages for a mother who died in court, described as what’s the value of your mother cutting the crust off your bread before she packed your lunch each day for school? You know, focusing in on those little things that a parent does that really show the love and show how much care a parent puts into your life that when they’re gone, it just cannot be replaced. Loss of Consortium damages in a case like this are sometimes the highest damages because there’s just absolutely no way to to ever compensate a person for what they’ve lost. The estate itself also has damages for any medical bills that were incurred before the person passed away. Sometimes, that’s nothing because they died at the scene. Sometimes it’s EMS and emergency room bills, but sometimes it’s extended hospitalization before the person passed away, and all of that goes in as a damage. Loss of earnings goes in. So, if you take someone my age, for example 44 years old, I probably got 20 plus years of work ahead of me. And were I to die and my wife bring a claim for me, they would look at what all my past earnings were and try to map that out on the 20 plus years in the future and say what would he have earned. And all of that becomes a damage that goes back to the estate and goes to the loved ones that are beneficiaries of that estate. They do try to figure out the effect of inflation on those future damages, and then they’ve got a method for bringing them back to what’s called present cost. So it’s a little more complicated than just looking at someone’s annual earnings and multiplying it out by 20 years or so. In fact, it’s a lot more complicated than that. There are experts called economists who specifically do that. Like they know how to do those calculations, and very few other people do. Finally, you’ve got pain and suffering. And pain and suffering is called conscious pain and suffering, and it’s meant to apply to the person who died. Again, in a wrongful death case, this can sometimes be controversial because you can’t ask the person how they feel, especially if they died either at the scene or very soon thereafter. And so sometimes, you’ll have big fights as to whether or not the person was conscious at any time between the injury and when they died, and did they actually feel anything? And sometimes, that causes you to bring medical experts in to determine whether or not it’s possible to know that the person was conscious and actually in pain and suffering. And again, you can’t measure those damages very easily but depending on the type of case, it can wind up being some of the largest damages that you have. So, when you’re looking at one of these cases, you want to think medical bills, you want to think lost earnings going all the way into the future into likely retirement age, you want to think was the person conscious before they died? And did they have pain and suffering? And then you want to look at the spouse and children of that person, and in some states, it could be other family members too. And say, what are their losses for not having this person in their life anymore? Once you’ve got all that, you have the damages for a wrongful death case.