When a loved one is killed in an accident or dies from preventable causes, your family is completely and totally bereaved. Nothing can replace your loved one, but there are damages your family might be entitled to to help you move forward after a death in the family.
Damages in a New York wrongful death lawsuit are almost entirely limited to “pecuniary” damages. This means economic damages – damages that pay you back for some monetary loss or expense related to the wrongful death. You can claim damages that your family paid, such as medical care and burial/funeral costs. This also means recovering damages for the lost wages your family now faces, as well as other lost values. You can also seek “punitive damages” in some cases, resulting in additional money to your family to punish the person or company responsible for the death. Typically, these damages have no caps.
For a free case evaluation, call The Martello Law Firm’s Westchester, NY wrongful death lawyers at (914) 685-6950.
Damages in a New York Wrongful Death Lawsuit
The damages available to a family in a wrongful death lawsuit will depend heavily on what damages your family incurred. This is a case-specific assessment; there isn’t a blanket amount paid for a death. Instead, the court looks at what monetary damages you encountered in the following areas.
Many of these damages are paid from two types of claims that our Yonkers, NY wrongful death lawyers can help you file: a survival action and a wrongful death action. The survival action allows the estate of the deceased to recover compensation the victim would have sued for in an injury lawsuit if they had lived. These damages are paid into the estate and distributed according to the victim’s will (or NY’s intestacy statute if they did not have a will). The damages the family faces are claimed in a wrongful death action.
Lost Wages
When someone dies, their financial support to the family goes away. In many families, the loss of a spouse or parent could mean that all income is gone, and the family will need those lost wages paid in order to keep going.
Medical Expenses
End-of-life medical care can be incredibly expensive, especially if your loved one lingered for some time after the accident. For example, a family member who was in a coma or had to be moved to full-time nursing care before ultimately passing away from car accident injuries will have incurred potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills in even a few short months. Ultimately, the at-fault party can be made to pay for these costs.
Pre-Death Pain and Suffering
Although most damages paid in a wrongful death lawsuit are pecuniary, the one major exception is the damages you can claim in a survival action for the victim’s pre-death pain and suffering. Since this lawsuit recovers damages for what the victim would have been able to sue for if they had survived the accident, their pain and suffering is fair game as damages.
These damages are often hard to calculate, but general principles acknowledge that a victim who was killed instantly likely suffered less compared to a victim who could see the accident coming or who lingered for a long time after a fatal injury.
Funeral/Burial Costs
The reasonable cost of funeral and burial is also included in a wrongful death lawsuit. This can be quite an expensive burden to suddenly be surprised with, and compensation is often available.
Lost Household Services
It might seem petty compared to the rest of the damages in a wrongful death case, but losing a loved one means losing help around the house. Especially in families with children, the loss of a spouse means additional burdens on the surviving spouse when it comes to childcare, cooking, cleaning, lawn care, home repairs, etc. In many families, the loss of a spouse means having to pay for more of these services, such as hiring a handyman or hiring a nanny/babysitter more often. The cost of these lost services can be claimed as damages.
Lost Parental Care
A child who loses a parent is allowed to claim compensation for the lost value of nurturing and care from a deceased parent. This is one of the few areas of damages in New York wrongful death claims that verges on landing outside of the “pecuniary” label, but courts have repeatedly upheld these damages, e.g., in Kenavan v. New York (1986). These damages can account for lost teaching, guidance, and training, as well as “parental nurture and care.”
Factors in Calculating Damages in a New York Wrongful Death Case
The pre-death damages claimed in a survival action are paid on account of the victim’s own injuries, expenses, and suffering. The family members’ needs are not taken into account there.
In a wrongful death suit, each individual recipient gets their own damages. For example, for a victim who died with a wife and two children, each of those three family members gets their own damages.
When assessing the amounts paid to children and spouses, the jury needs to take into account the life expectancy of the victim if it hadn’t been for their death, the expected length of support for children (e.g., through age 18, age 21, or some other age, depending on their needs), and other time-based factors like these. For example, if a child is 17 and will be financially supported through age 21, but the deceased parent was 2 years from retirement, those factors need to be taken into account when judging that child’s support needs and what the parent would have received in income.
Punitive Damages and Damage Caps in New York Wrongful Death Lawsuits
Punitive damages are paid to punish the defendant rather than to pay the victim or their family back for what happened. This means looking at the defendant’s financial status to determine how much must be ordered in damages to make them “feel it.”
Punitive damages are not allowed in every case, and there must usually be some serious recklessness involved, such as in cases of drunk driving or when a company’s repeat mistakes cause a death.
New York law has no caps on punitive damages – or any of these damages. However, punitive damages that are over 10 times as much as the other damages are usually seen as excessive.
Call Our Wrongful Death Attorneys in New York Today
If you lost a loved one, call (914) 685-6950 for a free case assessment with The Martello Law Firm’s Cortlandt, NY wrongful death lawyers.
