Losing a person you love is one painful event of your life. It would be even more painful when you lose such person due to wrongful death. What do we mean by wrongful death? In legal parlance, it is a kind of death wherein a person died due to another person’s wrongdoing or negligence.
If you are the surviving spouse of a person who died due to wrongful thing, one thing you need to know you can file a suit against the person who is liable for your loved one’s death. Although, the life of the person you love will not come back justice will be serve to you in the form of awarding you with compensation.
Wrongful death has four different categories, here are they:
Medical Malpractice
There has been a growing number of cases wherein wrongful death is caused by medical malpractice. There are over hundreds of thousands of people die each year due to this. Wrongful death due to medical malpractice is subdivided into four more categories, surgical malpractice, general negligence, medical errors and birth injuries.
There is a detailed report on medical malpractice HERE
Products Liability
Wrongful death caused by products liability simply means a person’s death is due to the direct result of a particular product which happens to be defective. A product is being classified as consumer goods such as equipment, automobiles, prescription drugs, among others. It has been noted that quite a number of cases have been filed under this category due to faulty tires. This has led to automotive crashes over the years.
Defective Drugs
There are quite a number of prescriptive drugs available today. As such, there are some of them that do have side effects which can be fatal. No wonder, there have been wrongful death claims filed to the courts. It has become a common reason for wrongful death. The manufacturer of the drugs in question can be held liable for wrongful death.
Toxic Exposure
This is one of which a person died due to his exposure of chemicals which were harmful to him, the exposure was on a regular basis, and led to his death. It usually happens around a workplace wherein the person is subjected to be expose to harmful chemicals such as asbestos, benzene, vinyl chloride and lead.
Take note that every state varies in giving out the prescriptive period wherein the surviving family may file a wrongful death suit. It is highly recommended to go seek the aid of a lawyer. He can assist you as to what needs to be done, whether or not you have a strong case or drop it before you will be wasting time and money at your end.
If in case you will be able to bring your case to the court, the the jury can award you with compensation. This will be computed accordingly based on the potential earnings or earnings of the deceased person. Of course, there are other factors to be considered when it comes to the computation of the compensation.
