Wrongful death lawyers pursue claims when a loved one died because of someone else. Amid the sadness of losing someone you love, it’s essential to have someone on your side to investigate who is responsible for their death and take the right steps to protect your interests.
Few things are more traumatic than losing a loved one suddenly and unexpectedly due to an accident. The loss of a family member or loved one has a long-term impact on a family. Although no amount of money can compensate a family for the loss of a loved one, a wrongful death lawsuit may provide compensation for the family’s losses. When someone is killed as a result of someone else’s carelessness, a criminal conduct, a faulty product, or the victim dies before a trial few attorneys understand how the potential solutions vary. When considering whether or not to file a claim, an experienced wrongful death attorney should be engaged.
Our wrongful death lawyers provide free, no-obligation consultations to assist you to understand your choices, and we don’t charge until your case is satisfactorily resolved. Our firm is devoted to assisting families through this terrible time and getting the compensation that our clients need to cover medical costs, funeral fees, and any associated losses. Our wrongful death lawyer is board certified and has achieved superb results for his clients that total more than $100 million. Please call us at 1-800-883-9858 or contact us online if you suspect a family member’s death was caused by someone else’s misconduct.
A wrongful death attorney can assist a family member or beneficiary in filing a wrongful death lawsuit, survival action, and other applicable remedies under wrongful death laws that may apply to the specific facts of their loss.
The wrongful death may be due to the negligence of a truck driver, another driver, an employer, slip and fall, industrial accident, rollover accident, or due to a defective product. Other wrongful death claims may be due to the fault of a negligent doctor amounting to medical malpractice, exposures to toxic chemicals, benzene, asbestos, recalled or defective drugs or dangerous conditions, or unsafe practices.
In addition, traffic fatalities from car, motorcycle, or 18-wheeler truck accidents and types of vehicle accidents may lead to wrongful death claims, as can a death due to dangerous premises or property, when the owner of the property where the death occurred can be held at fault or responsible for the loss of life by not providing a safe place to visit, live or work. There are many types of wrongful death.
Most accidental deaths are preventable. Those who fail to prevent a death can be held legally liable for the death of your family member and compelled to pay for the losses and damages claimed by victims’ survivors.
The loss of a family member takes more than an emotional toll on survivors. It also can take a severe financial toll. Those burdens caused should not be shouldered by the survivors, but rather should be paid by those at fault — those who are responsible for the death. For that to happen, a wrongful death lawsuit is needed.
The wrongful death attorneys for such a lawsuit should have the experience to determine how much a person’s death, in that particular case, should be worth in court.
Naturally, a price cannot be placed on the irreplaceable loss of life of a loved one. But courts can determine the financial costs of such devastation and can award payments for such costs to a victim’s survivors in wrongful death cases.
These can include payments for loss of future earnings or income as well as employee benefits. They also can include any associated medical costs, as well as funeral and burial expenses. Finally, a court may award payments it deems fitting given the emotional pain and mental anguish of survivors due to their loved one’s death and an ensuing loss of companionship.
If a loved one or someone in your family died because someone else committed wrongdoing, you may have a legal right to seek financial compensation using a lawsuit. That means engaging knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced wrongful death attorneys or fatal accident lawyers.
Naturally, soon after a loved one’s death the family is coping with pain and grief from the loss and must deal with a funeral and other details. But it’s also important — even at this sensitive time with the grieving process — to be aware of the costs involved in the death and who should be responsible for paying them.
If the family has reason to believe that failures by others directly caused the death, then it’s important to talk to a wrongful death attorney for help — and to do so quickly. Such attorneys can examine the details of the case and evaluate who was at fault and how much the death has cost.
Acting quickly to speak to a wrongful death lawyer also can enable your legal representative to begin investigating the case promptly, while evidence is still fresh. Your attorney also may need to hire special investigators or locate expert witnesses to lay the groundwork for a wrongful death lawsuit.
An attorney will work to identify the potential defendants in such a lawsuit, while also documenting the financial costs of the death and their impact on survivors. A wrongful death lawyer also can pinpoint where to file a wrongful death action in the legal arena — that is, which court in which jurisdiction.
Before trial, wrongful death attorneys or lawyers may negotiate out of court with a defendant’s legal representatives or insurance providers to reach a satisfactory settlement offer for clients’ approval. Such an out-of-court settlement can save the time and expense of a trial. Many lawsuits for wrongful death are resolved in this way.
Acting quickly to launch the case also may be vital given the statute of limitations for wrongful death lawsuits in your state. In California, Texas, Ohio, and many other states, for instance, a wrongful death lawsuit must be filed within two years of the date of the victim’s death. After that time limit has passed, a family member no longer has a legal right to file such a lawsuit. Don’t wait, as the filing deadlines in some states are as short as one year from the accident and in product liability cases it can be even shorter. Call us and we can help sort these deadlines out.
Personal injury attorneys handle wrongful death lawsuits. David P. Willis is a board certified personal injury trial lawyer. Only about 1,300 lawyers in Texas are board certified. This is because the standards for taking the examination are exceptionally difficult to obtain. And the test is widely accepted as more difficult than the bar examination. Hiring a board certified lawyer means that you’re getting a lawyer who cares enough to provide the best to his clients. And it does not cost any more than hiring another personal injury lawyer.
When a loved one dies as a result of someone else’s negligence, wrongful death law allows grieving family members to seek compensation. Many family members would be unable to maintain themselves financially if this legislation did not exist. They would also be deprived the satisfaction of seeing the perpetrator brought accountable in court.
Wrongful death lawsuits, like vehicle accidents and product defect claims, are civil actions. They are, nevertheless, more difficult than other personal injury lawsuits. To make a successful claim, you’ll need an attorney with extensive knowledge in this area of law on your side.
It’s difficult to find evidence of a wrongful death.
If you survived an accident and were harmed, you might tell an attorney what occurred and testify in a lawsuit against the individual who damaged you. Unfortunately, in wrongful death claims, the victim is no longer alive. That isn’t to say that a wrongful death lawsuit can’t be won. It does, however, mean that finding proof will be more difficult.
We may interview anyone who may have seen the incident that resulted in the death of your loved one at our wrongful death law firm. Medical data might also be used as evidence to determine how the accident occurred.
Physical evidence, security footage, and the defendant’s testimony might all be useful evidence. Finding this evidence requires time and legal expertise, which is why hiring an experienced attorney is critical.
It’s difficult to know when to file a wrongful death lawsuit.
Some wrongful death cases can potentially be prosecuted as criminal offenses. It is typically preferable to pursue your civil lawsuit after the criminal prosecution has completed, since you may be able to compel the defendant to testify. Gaining an edge requires understanding how a wrongful death case intersects with a probable criminal case.
We have been involved in hundreds of wrongful death cases over the last 38 years. Those include matters like:
Wrongful death case results can vary greatly across the USA depending on different facts, accident location, persons or family members involved, and of course the wrongful acts of the defendant. Talk to an attorney today and get your questions answered.
Though many kinds of fatal accidents can lead to legal action seeking financial compensation for family members of a victim, all such legal actions require many of the same elements to proceed. These vital elements of wrongful death claims include:
DUTY OF CARE: Showing that someone had a duty of care to ensure people’s safety is the first thing that must be established in a wrongful death legal action. But what is the duty of care?
Duty of care is a legal term referring to the obligation, responsibility, or duty of a person or entity to act with reasonable care while doing anything which could foreseeably harm others.
BREACH OF DUTY OF CARE: A wrongful death lawsuit then must prove that someone breached or violated their legally mandated duty of care when they had the opportunity to do otherwise.
Failure to act with a duty of care can happen in a variety of ways, such as selling unsafe products, providing negligent services, driving recklessly, creating a dangerous workplace, or failing to follow safety standards on a job or property.
CAUSATION: Proving that a person had a duty of care and then breached that obligation is not enough to prevail in wrongful death lawsuits. Wrongful death lawyers also must prove that such failure in duty of care or caution directly led to the loss or caused a death.
In other words, it is one thing to prove that a person, institution, or entity had a responsibility of caution yet acted negligently or recklessly. A claim of wrongful death also must prove that this negligence then caused a death. That means proving “causation.” Legally, causation is a matter of showing cause and effect. That is, it means proving that a person’s negligence, recklessness, or failure was a cause that directly led to the effect of death.
For instance, if a person dies after using a defective medical device or product, then it must be proven that the defective device or product was directly responsible for that death. Or if the decedent was killed in a drunk driving crash on a highway, it must be proven that the other driver drove in such a manner that caused the fatal accident.
Again, proving that another party was negligent is insufficient to succeed with a wrongful death claim. When one does file a wrongful death lawsuit, one must prove that such an act of negligence caused the death in question. In some cases, the actions on the part are so reckless, that the defendant(s) can be shown to be grossly negligent by which punitive damages are awarded against the wrongdoer. Demonstrating such causation is essential to prevail in a lawsuit for wrongful death and gain economic recovery or financial compensation for family members.
Keep in mind that such a lawsuit is a civil action is not the same type of case as a criminal act. If deemed necessary, when people die due to someone’s negligence, authorities may file criminal charges separately on behalf of the state. For example, if the death of one’s spouse occurred due to a drunk driver, then the local District Attorney will bring a criminal case for the DWI or DUI and negligent manslaughter or negligent homicide in a criminal district court at the same time the spouse or other family members would hire a civil attorney to file a wrongful death claim against the wrongdoer, their employer, or another third party. In such a death case, the liability insurance company that provided coverage will enter the case and represent the party in a claim or lawsuit through trial and appeal.
While no amount of money can restore the life of a loved one who suffered a wrongful death, a civil lawsuit at least can provide economic recovery and financial compensation for survivors, as well as a sense of justice. That’s why wrongful death cases must be pursued. It is important that you talk to an experienced wrongful death attorney about your case and where to file a lawsuit for the estate of your lost loved one. If you have questions about which types of damages might be allowed in your particular case, then calls for a free consultation with an attorney with our firm today.
If you have questions about which types of damages might be allowed in your particular case, then talk to an attorney with our firm today. Call for a Free Consultation at 1-800-883-9858.
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