Did you lose a loved one due to negligence in Stillwater? Read the 4 things you need to know about a wrongful death, then call our lawyers now.
1. Who Can File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit?
Obviously, if someone is married, then their spouse can bring the claim. If it’s a minor child who passed, their parents can bring the claim. If its’s an unmarried child, and an adult, the parents can bring the claim. We will find somebody that can be able to be the champion of this case. There are issues when parents are divorced and they hire different attorneys. I wouldn’t wait long to get these things resolved. It’s better to be unified when you take on a case than to be divided and be divisive. I’d suggest you hire a lawyer, and the whole family come meet with them, and go over all your rights, and make sure that everybody’s on the same page.
2. Damages
Wrongful death cases have a lot of damages that you can make a claim for. Obviously, if you have a loved one who’s taken away from you, you have loss of companionship. These loses are really serious and emotional.
You can be compensated for the suffering that your loved one had to endure before passing away. You have a loss of their ability to take care of you and financially support you. If you’re a widower, you have the loss of someone who was going to take care of you, and be your companion. Lost future earnings are also something that you can possibly collect for. You also have burial expenses that can be compensated. Also, you have medical bills that were incurred by your loved one before they passed away. Then depending on the circumstances, there’s punitive damages if the loss occurred due to reckless and intentional behavior of intent to cause harm.
Hire a lawyer early on. One, you may not be in good shape to deal with any of the issues because you just lost someone close to you. You need to hire a professional that can start to work immediately to preserve the evidence, protect the record, and do all they can to help you prepare to get a fair settlement or verdict.
3. Case Value
It’s difficult to determine what a wrongful death case is worth. There are so many factors that are involved. For instance, if you have a 30-year marriage and your spouse has been taken away from you, that’s different than if you had a one-year marriage. It also depends on how much money one spouse made, and how much the lost income will be for the rest of your life. Also, it’s the circumstances of the wreck or accident. Was it a painful situation? How much time did the person who passed away live? How much time were they conscious? Did they know what was happening to them? How many members of the family did they support? How many children did they have? Were they married? Were they single?
All these factors along with medical bills, which can be very expensive, all go into account. There’s only really one group of people who will decide what your wrongful death case is worth; a jury. We have to prepare our case to help them understand what your losses are, what they can award damages for. Then we can help them come up with a value for us.
4. Settlement Timeline
It could be years depending on the circumstances of the incident that caused the death, depending on how many defendants there are, and how many attorneys are involved in the case. It depends on what jurisdiction you’re in, how busy the court is. Insurance companies have a way of prolonging cases. They’re hoping that the victims in a wrongful death case will get litigation fatigue and quit. Their mentality is to delay, deny, discourage, then defeat. They do that regularly and it works more often than it ought to. It hurts me sometimes when my clients give up the fight when they’re entitled to more. You need to find an attorney that will be vigilant in moving this case along as quickly as they can. If you have that, then these cases can take less time.
Did you lose a loved one due to another’s negligence and have questions about the the 4 things you need to know about a wrongful death? Contact a Stillwater wrongful death attorney at Murray Law Firm today for a free confidential consultation and case evaluation. Let our experience work for you.
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