Punitive damages may be available in some wrongful death cases when the conduct causing a person’s death was substantially more serious than ordinary negligence. Depending on the applicable state law, these damages may also be called exemplary damages.
A family pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit may understandably ask why one fatal accident results in compensatory damages while another case can include punitive damages. The answer generally depends on the defendant’s conduct, what the defendant knew before the death, and the law governing the case.
Punitive damages are not automatically available simply because someone died. A fatal accident can result from negligence without satisfying the higher legal standard generally required for punitive damages. When evidence establishes gross negligence, conscious disregard of a serious danger, fraud, malice, intentional misconduct, or similarly wrongful conduct, an additional claim may be possible.
What Are Punitive Damages?
Most wrongful death damages are intended to compensate surviving family members for losses caused by the death. Punitive damages have a different purpose.
Rather than measuring what the family lost, punitive damages generally focus on the seriousness of the defendant’s conduct. They may be intended to punish especially wrongful behavior and discourage similar conduct in the future.
The terminology and legal standards vary significantly among states. Some jurisdictions call these awards punitive damages, while others use exemplary damages. State law can impose heightened proof requirements, restrict the circumstances in which punitive damages are recoverable, or limit the amount awarded.
A punitive-damages claim therefore must be evaluated under the law applicable to the particular case rather than treated as an automatic part of every wrongful death lawsuit.
When Can Gross Negligence Support Punitive Damages?
Ordinary negligence generally involves a failure to exercise reasonable care. Punitive damages usually require substantially more.
In a commercial trucking case, evidence might reveal repeated safety violations, knowingly dangerous equipment, falsified records, or company practices that exposed motorists to a recognized extreme danger. An industrial case might involve management’s knowledge of a hazardous condition that produced previous incidents or repeated warnings but was nevertheless allowed to continue.
A defective-product case may raise similar questions if evidence shows that a manufacturer knew of a serious defect or pattern of catastrophic failures but failed to take reasonable corrective action.
These cases can depend heavily on internal records, testing information, previous incidents, emails, safety reports, engineering documents, and testimony establishing what company decision-makers knew before the fatal event.
Punitive damages therefore often require an investigation extending far beyond the immediate mechanics of the accident.
Punitive Damages Are Different From Family Compensation
A wrongful death case can involve substantial damages even when punitive damages are unavailable. Compensatory damages focus on legally recognized losses suffered because of the death rather than punishment of the defendant.
The death of a spouse or parent, for example, can result in decades of lost financial support as well as the loss of companionship, care, advice, guidance, and services. Our discussion of economic and non-economic wrongful death damages explains these important categories of family loss.
A surviving spouse may also have a legally recognized claim involving the destruction of the marital relationship. The nature of that loss and the applicable state law are discussed further on our loss of consortium page.
These compensatory claims are fundamentally different from punitive damages. A jury may find substantial compensatory losses even when the defendant’s conduct does not satisfy the separate standard for punitive damages.
Some cases can also involve survival claims belonging to the deceased person’s estate, medical expenses, funeral expenses, or other damages permitted by applicable law.
Evidence Can Determine Whether Punitive Damages Apply
Families frequently know little about a company’s internal decisions immediately after a fatal accident. Critical evidence may be controlled by the defendant or another corporation.
Relevant evidence can include safety reports, emails, internal memoranda, inspection records, previous complaints, maintenance histories, testing documents, training records, governmental citations, prior accidents, and communications among employees or executives.
Preserving evidence can therefore become important soon after a death. Electronic information can be overwritten, physical evidence can change, equipment can be repaired, and employees with firsthand knowledge may leave a company.
Punitive damages should not be pursued merely because a defendant is a large corporation or because the consequences of an accident were catastrophic. The evidence must support the legal standard required by the applicable jurisdiction.
Investigating Serious Misconduct After a Wrongful Death
Whether a family has a viable punitive-damages claim cannot usually be determined from the severity of an accident alone. The investigation must examine both what happened and what the defendant knew before it happened.
A company may initially characterize a fatal incident as an unavoidable accident or isolated employee mistake. Records obtained later can sometimes reveal previous warnings, repeated violations, unresolved hazards, prior similar incidents, or management decisions allowing a dangerous practice to continue.
An experienced wrongful death lawyer can investigate the accident, identify potentially responsible parties, preserve important evidence, and determine whether the facts support claims beyond ordinary negligence.
Punitive damages can be an important issue when a preventable death resulted from exceptionally dangerous conduct. The decision to pursue them should be based on evidence and applicable law rather than assumptions about the defendant or the magnitude of the family’s loss.
