Wrongful Death Lawyer
When negligence causes death, families have the right to pursue wrongful death claims. Surviving family members can recover compensation for their loss.
Wrongful Death Overview
Wrongful death claims arise when someone's death is caused by another person's negligence, intentional act, or defective product. In the medical context, wrongful death can result from medical malpractice, hospital negligence, medication errors, or defective medical devices.
Wrongful death claims allow surviving family members to recover compensation for their loss.
Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death
Medical malpractice can cause death through misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, medication overdose, anesthesia errors, and failure to monitor critically ill patients.
Common cases involve missed cancer diagnoses, unrecognized heart attacks or strokes, and failures to recognize life-threatening infections.
Causation Requirements
To establish a wrongful death claim, we must prove that negligence directly caused the death. This requires expert testimony establishing deviation from standard of care and that this deviation directly caused death.
The death must be a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the negligent conduct.
Damages in Wrongful Death Claims
Wrongful death damages include economic losses such as lost earnings the deceased would have earned, lost benefits, and funeral expenses.
Non-economic damages include loss of companionship, loss of parental guidance, loss of spousal support, and loss of life enjoyment. Damages depend on age, earning capacity, and family relationships.
Who Can Pursue a Claim
Surviving family members including spouses, children, and parents can pursue wrongful death claims. In some states, other dependents may also bring claims.
To evaluate your case, we need all medical records documenting the negligence, expert review establishing negligence and causation, and information about family composition and economic impact.
The information on this page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page or submitting a contact form.