San Diego Wrongful Death Attorney

If your loved one tragically died because of someone else’s actions, it not only leaves a huge void in your family but also leaves you looking for justice and accountability. You want to ensure that your family member’s death does not go unanswered, despite the responsible person’s efforts to escape liability. Defendants and their insurance companies always try to protect their own bank accounts, so you need someone to protect you and your family.

You do not need to let someone else get away with their wrongful actions. Filing a wrongful death lawsuit can both secure the compensation that your family needs to replace the income that your loved one provided and help your family progress towards the time when you can get some closure from what happened. Therefore, the wrongful death legal process is a must for your family, regardless of whether you are ready to participate. Thankfully, you do not have to do the heavy lifting on your own. Our San Diego wrongful death attorney can help.

How Wrongful Deaths Can Happen

Wrongful deaths can happen in any type of personal injury case, including:

• Car accidents
• Truck accidents
• Pedestrian accidents
• Physical attacks on someone else’s premises
• Slip-and-falls
• Equipment malfunctions, such as an elevator or escalator accidents
• Motorcycle accidents
• Bicycle accidents

How Your Wrongful Death Settlement is Determined

We can only imagine how difficult it must be for you to think about your loved one’s passing in financial terms. However, in a wrongful death case, it’s important to recognize the immense value your loved one brought to your family.

While no amount of money can ever replace them, compensation can be provided to help ease the financial burden caused by their loss. This compensation may cover expenses such as:

• The loss of the guidance, love, and support that your loved one provided
• Your own grief and trauma that you suffer from tragically losing a loved one because of someone else’s actions
• The future lost earnings that your family member would have earned because they would have provided this income for the family

In addition, the estate would also be able to recover damages for what the deceased person had to endure and the injuries that they suffered between the time of their injury and death

It follows that wrongful death cases are worth a large amount of money. The actual settlement depends both on the specific role that your loved one played and the amount of available insurance coverage to pay for damages that policyholders cause.

The Role of Negligence in a Wrongful Death Case

A wrongful death case is a personal injury case where the injury is the death of another person. Accordingly, it uses the same legal standard as every other personal injury case. You do not get a relaxed legal standard because your loved one has died. You must still prove that someone else was negligent to win your case.

Negligence involves several things:

• Proving that someone else’s actions breached their duty to exercise reasonable care.
• Comparing it to what a reasonable person would have done under the circumstances and showing how it fell short.

Your case is made stronger when you come to the table with evidence. In every wrongful death case, you have the burden of proof to show that someone else was negligent. If you cannot come to the table with evidence, you may end up empty-handed with no compensation for the death of your loved one.

A personal injury attorney can strengthen your case because part of their experience is investigating what happened and assembling the proof that could put your family in a position to get the money they need and deserve.

Wrongful death evidence can fall into several categories:

• Administrative evidence, such as the death certificate and autopsy report that shows the cause of death
• Financial evidence that proves the contribution that your loved one made to the family
• Physical evidence that could prove someone else’s liability, including witness testimony, photographs, and expert witness testimony that could shed light on someone else’s actions and prove that they fell short of the standard of care
• Family testimony that shows what each person lost when their loved one died

California Wrongful Death Laws

All wrongful death cases in California are governed by state law that dictates who can sue for the death of a loved one.

The following people can file a wrongful death claim:

• The surviving spouse
• The surviving child or children
• Dependent minors, even if they are not legal children
• Parents of the deceased, if they were financially dependent on the deceased
• If nobody is on the above list, other heirs can file the claim per California intestate succession laws.

Families are free to decide amongst themselves how to divide the wrongful death proceeds. If they cannot agree, the court may have to get involved.

The other law that would affect your case is the statute of limitations. In California, you have two years from the time of death or when you learned that the death was caused by someone else’s wrongful acts to file a lawsuit. The legal process takes time, and you want to begin working on it today.

Why You Need a Wrongful Death Lawyer

The legal process is indispensable when your family expects financial compensation after the death of a loved one. If you do not go through it, you cannot get a settlement check or a jury award. However, you may not want to deal with the details when you are going through the aftermath of a tragic death.

An experienced wrongful death lawyer will deal with the insurance company and the defendant on your behalf, so you can focus on what is important. We will also fight for your family when someone else tries to escape responsibility for what they did.

Call a San Diego Wrongful Death Lawyer Today

The lawyers at DP Injury Attorneys in San Diego are the dedicated and passionate advocates that you need on your side when you have a legal fight on your hands. We will fight for the justice and compensation that your family must have when another person was responsible for the death of your loved one. To learn more about how we can help your family, contact us to schedule your free initial consultation.