Have you lost a loved one due to the negligence of another person and have questions about how to win your wrongful death claim? Call us now!
Choosing an Attorney
If you need to hire an attorney or lawyer in Oklahoma for a wrongful death case, I suggest you do some research. I suggest you inquire about any wrongful death cases they’ve handled and how significant they’ve been. How did the wrongful death case they’ve handled go? How did they compare to the one you may have? Was it a tractor-trailer case? Was it a malpractice case? Was it a slip and fall case? Was there a nursing home case? All those things are important for you to make a determination in making your decision. You need to find a lawyer who understands your situation. It should be someone who you like, and feel comfortable talking about personal things with. You need to find a lawyer who’s easily accessible. You don’t want a lawyer who, when you make a phone call to them, you don’t hear back for two weeks. You want to find a lawyer you can walk in, and make an appointment, and see at will.
Probably the most important thing is, you need to find a lawyer that will be your champion, who understands what your loss is. They’ll do all in their power to make sure it’s been righted and that you’ve been fully compensated. Maybe more importantly, help you send a message to this company, or nursing home, or whoever it is that you can’t violate safety rules this way and hurt other people.
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit?
If you have a loved one who’s died a wrongful death, then there are statutory laws on who can bring a claim. 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.
Wrongful Death 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.
I would suggest that you 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.
Settlement Timeline
A question that’s frequently asked of me is, “How long will a wrongful death case take once a lawsuit has started to resolve?” 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 how to win your wrongful death claim? 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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