A wrongful death claim will be painful to file because it will remind you that you have lost a loved one too soon. For many people, though, a wrongful death claim or a lawsuit is also a reminder that there can be a sense of closure and a chance to move on. The damages secured in a successful case allow financial stability again, which opens up new opportunities to focus on grieving, rather than bills.
In Florida, there are a number of damages available to wrongful death claimants, who are usually the deceased person’s spouse, child, or parent. The damages will be notably different from what you might expect to see in a typical personal injury claim.
Florida wrongful death claimants might be able to secure damages for:
- Lost support and services: Someone who contributed significantly to the management of their household has provided “free services” of all sorts. A fair value can be assigned to those lost services in a wrongful death claim. For example, imagine that a man shopped for groceries and cooked dinner for his family every day up until he passed away in a fatal car accident. A wrongful death attorney could make an argument that those “services” were worth at least $25 in labor a day, which adds up to more than $9,000 in a year.
- Lost companionship: Other than tangible services, people add enrichment, guidance, companionship, and protection to the lives of their family members. These various forms of enrichment can be translated to noneconomic damages in a wrongful death claim. Typically, noneconomic damage is meant to represent hardship or pain added to the claimant’s life, but, in this case, it is representative of the absence of joy and contentment.
- Emotional anguish: Florida also allows another specific form of noneconomic damage to be recovered by parents who have lost a child due to the negligence of a third party. This emotional anguish can be substantial because losing a child, especially a young child, is understood to be one of the most devastating circumstances anyone can face in life.
- Funeral expenses: Lastly, a significant form of compensation that can be paid to a wrongful death claimant is any money that they or another party – other than the deceased person’s estate – spent on a funeral for the deceased. It is often understood that repayment for funeral expenses is capped by an amount deemed to be “reasonable.” In other words, a claimant would have difficulty recovering the money spent on a $100,000 funeral when most funerals cost no more than $10,000.
Additional damage types can also be paid directly to the deceased person’s estate, rather than a surviving family member. The estate is able to collect damages that reflect the wages and benefits that the deceased person likely would have earned in their life had they not passed away due to the defendant’s negligence. Other damages paid by the estate because of the fatal injury or illness can also be recollected through damages, such as any money taken out of the estate to pay for medical treatments and a burial.
For more information about filing a wrongful death claim in Florida, you can call (386) 333-6613 and speak with an attorney from Politis & Matovina, P.A. We take a careful and compassionate approach to wrongful death claims because we know you are already dealing with so much, you do not need to have legal complications and stress added to your life, too. Contact us now to learn more.