When you lose a loved one due to someone else’s negligence, you may struggle with many emotions, including grief, loneliness, injustice, and fear. When the wrongdoer’s actions rise to the level of a crime, they may face criminal charges. You may never get that justice when their actions are only negligent.
A loved one’s death can also lead to significant financial hardship. A family’s financial status can change overnight when the loved one was a breadwinner. You may also be struggling to pay for medical bills or funeral expenses. A wrongful death action can help cover these costs. A knowledgeable attorney can help you with filing a Reno wrongful death action to recover financially for your losses.
When a person dies due to someone else’s negligence, the survivors can bring two different types of lawsuits: wrongful death and survival actions. The estate files a survival action, which seeks compensation for damages to the deceased as a result of the injury, and the surviving family members file a wrongful death action, which seeks compensation for individual family members.
One type of compensation is economic damages, which cover the financial losses that result from the death. Lost wages, lost earning potential, loss of services, medical bills, and funeral expenses are some examples of financial damages surviving family members may experience. However, the damages to the survivors often go well beyond financial damages.
Loss of companionship, loss of support, and loss of consortium are examples of non-economic damages. To determine this subtype of compensatory damage, the court or other factfinder attempts to put a financial value on losing a loved one. While financial damages are easy to demonstrate based on the deceased’s earning capacity and career history, intangible losses are more challenging to establish. They are based on the deceased’s role in their loved ones’ lives and what type of compensation they deserve for that loss.
Filing a Reno wrongful death claim can help survivors recover for both types of damages. The family may even seek punitive damages when the wrongdoer’s actions were negligent, reckless, or malicious.
One of the primary differences between a wrongful death claim and a survival action is who can bring the suit. In a survival action, the deceased’s estate brings or continues the action on behalf of the victim. In a wrongful death action, the surviving family members bring the wrongful death action on their own behalf.
The ability to file a wrongful death action in Reno is conferred by statute and cannot be given to others. The personal representative of the deceased’s estate can bring a wrongful death lawsuit, which will benefit the beneficiaries of the estate. Those may or may not be family members, depending on the details in the decedent’s will or intestacy inheritance rules.
When there is no will naming a personal representative, the surviving family members can bring a lawsuit. Not every family member has the same rights. The spouse or children can bring the suit when a person is married with children at the time of death. When the deceased leaves no child or spouse behind, their parents or siblings can bring a lawsuit.
To prove a wrongful death suit, the survivors must establish:
Since the harm can be intangible, family members can recover even if a victim’s death did not lead to direct economic losses.
After the loss of a loved one, you may dread the idea of litigation involving their death. However, you and your loved one deserve justice for their death. A wrongful death action is one way to ensure you and other survivors get compensation for your loss. You might even combine it with a survival action when the deceased suffered before death.
Schedule a consultation with an attorney to learn more about filing a Reno wrongful death action.
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