Ask the Expert: What is a Wrongful Death Case?

When a family loses somebody because of another person's negligence, there can be a lot of unanswered questions. So, Taylor Aysen with the Gideon Aysen Law Firm is here to tell us a little bit more about wrongful death cases. Taylor, thank you so much for having us. Thanks for taking the time. Well, let's talk big picture. What exactly is a wrongful death lawsuit and what could be some situations that lead to that? So as you said, wrongful death lawsuit is just a personal injury lawsuit where somebody dies. It can happen in a range of different circumstances. We see a lot of motor vehicle wrongful death cases. Unfortunately, those are on the rise in our state. Industrial accidents, people at the workplace dying. Medical malpractice can also result in a wrongful death. Who can file a wrongful death case? So the person who files is actually the personal representative of the estate. Usually that's a spouse if there is one. If it is a child, God forbid, a small child, it will be the parents. And if it's a parent who no longer has a spouse, it would be the children. How do damages work in a case like this? There are several kinds of damages. There are damages for wrongful death, and those are damages not to compensate the person who's died but to compensate the family who's lost. Those damages are capped in our state at about a million dollars. It goes up slightly every year. But there's other types of damages as well. There are economic damages, meaning if the person worked, what the cost of replacing that person's income is, or the work they do around the house. Then there's also pain and suffering damages in some cases, which has to do with the pain and suffering before the person's death. What should somebody do if they think, Hey, I might have a case here? It's best not to wait and that's hard because people are grieving but when these cases are very serious and we like to start the investigation early. So the best thing to do is give us a call or find us online and talk to us. If we think you might have a case then we'll begin the investigation. Excellent. Well Taylor, thank you so much. Of Certainly a difficult time when people are experiencing that. We will have more information as well on WGME dot com.