In the wake of a loved one’s passing, the last thing anyone wants to deal with is hiring a lawyer. There’s so much to handle, take care of and come to terms with that getting a lawyer feels like it should be at the bottom of the list of priorities if not off the list entirely. However, getting a lawyer as early as possible in your case can make everything that much easier later on. That being said, nothing about a wrongful death case is easy. Every part of the process is hard on the loved ones. But, with a wrongful death attorney in Los Angeles from the LA Injury Group on your side, you can get the compensation you deserve. In this article, we’ll discuss what needs to proved in a wrongful death case and how we can help.
No two wrongful death cases are the same. They’re all different, but they have some similarities in common. We’ve been handling wrongful death cases for many years. We know what to do to get you the compensation that you should have for everything that you’ve had to go through. Often, these cases are brought because your loved one’s death was caused by the recklessness, negligence, malice or incompetence of someone else. It’s not always easy to tell if that’s the case. Should you have questions about this, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re always available to sit down with you and figure out if you have a wrongful death case.
Typically, it’s important to prove that, in a wrongful death case, the defendant owned your loved one a duty. Often, this is a particular legal duty. It’s easy to get confused here, as it may seem like a very high bar to clear in terms of what “duty” means. To make it easier, substitute the word “duty” with the word “obligation.” For example, if your loved one passes away in a vehicular accident and the other person drives recklessly, you can bring a wrongful death suit against them. They had a duty/obligation to drive in a non-reckless manner, on account of them being a fellow driver on the road. You can then extrapolate this out to other scenarios.
As you might imagine, “duty” is covered quite explicitly in medical malpractice cases. The medical professionals had a duty to deliver proper care to your loved one. Through their own incompetence, malice, recklessness or similar they failed in that task. Then, a suit can be brought against them. In slip and fall wrongful death cases, the duty could be that the person who owned or maintained the location where the fall occurred had a duty to provide a safer environment. An attorney from the LA Injury Group can sit down with you to figure out exactly how your loved one was failed by another.
Usually in a wrongful death case, the first task of our attorneys is proving that the defendant owed your loved one a duty. Then, the next step is to show that the defendant breached that duty. It’s on us to show that the defendant violated their duty that they owed your loved one. Use the above examples for clarifications if need be. In the case of a vehicular accident, the other driver had a duty to drive carefully. They ran through a stop sign and caused the accident. They breached their duty of being a careful driver.
For the medical malpractice example, the medical professionals had a duty to provide quality care. By working incompetently, recklessly or maliciously, they breached that duty. In a slip and fall, the owner/maintainer had a duty to provide a safe environment; they breached that duty with an unsafe environment. Those are just a few of the examples of duty being breached. There are many more. Again, should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
To this point, we’ve proven that the defendant had a duty to your loved one. Then, we showed that hey breached that duty. Next, it’s on us to prove that their breach of duty had a direct causation to the passing of your loved one. That means that when they breached their duty, it lead directly to your loved one’s passing. There was nothing else that could’ve caused it, no extenuating circumstance or other possible reason. It has to be the defendant’s breach of duty that lead to the passing, bottom line.
So, to use the above examples again, the vehicular accident is fairly straightforward: the other driver ran the stop sign and crashed into your loved one. The car accident ended their life. In the case of the medical malpractice, we have to show that it was the breach of duty by the medical professionals that lead to your loved one’s passing, and not what landed them in the care of the medical professionals in the first place. In terms of the slip and fall, we have to show that the slip and fall is what caused them to pass. It wasn’t something that had been lingering inside them, it wasn’t something else, it was the fall itself.
In the end, nothing can make up for the passing of a loved one. To lose someone that’s so close to you is a pain that never goes away, but it can fade a bit over time. No amount of money, cash or compensation can ever truly substitute for that. However, as we tell clients and prospective clients all the time, the money can make this difficult time just a bit easier. Your loved one loved you. They would want you to have the compensation you deserve for their passing. They would want you to have an easier time adjusting to your new life. That’s where we can help in regards to getting you the compensation that you deserve.
Many of our clients and prospective clients are often surprised by how many different kinds of damages we can go after in terms of a wrongful death case. Usually, people know that you can get compensation for the funeral as well as the medical expenses of the loved one. Often, that’s all that they’re aware of in terms of damages. They know that you can get compensation for the costs that the defendant was absolutely responsible for, the funeral and the medical costs. However, there’s much more to wrongful death damages than just those.
For example, we can get you damages for the loss of financial support. If you counted on your loved one for money, then you deserve to be compensated for it. After all, if your loved one were still around, they would be working and providing for you. On top of that, as we’ve mentioned, nothing makes up for the loss of a loved one’s companionship. So, we can get you compensation for having lost that companionship as well as for the loss of their love and affection. They might have provided various household services (especially if they lived with you) and you deserve to be compensated for those as well. If there’s a type of compensation we can get you, we’ll do everything we can to get it for you.
Of course, the insurance companies and their employees will do everything they can to keep this from happening. When you go up against an insurance company or others in a wrongful death case, you deserve to have attorneys on your side who have been through this before. We’ve taken on insurance companies so many times in the past and won big prizes and awards for our clients. To schedule a free initial consultation, give us a call at (818) 240-1800 or head to our site.