Damages in Wrongful Death Suits

At our Brooklyn law firm, our wrongful death attorneys carefully evaluate each aspect of our clients' cases to ensure maximum recovery.

MR. ZUCKER: What we are able to recover in wrongful death cases in New York is for the conscious pain and suffering of the decedent and we try to impress upon the jury through medical testimony and through testimony of those who are close to the decedent, the pain and the suffering that this individual went through at the end of his or her life, the loss of services to a spouse, what the value would be to hire someone to come in and cook and clean, and of course that's not really what a spouse does but we do call economists to testify to those values. Of course, if the spouse was employed we not only show what the spouse was earning at the time of death but with pay increases, with inflation, with the value of the health insurance or other benefits the spouse had comes to, and nowadays with the cost of health insurance, if someone had health insurance at their job well that could easily exceed a $10,000 benefit. And we’ll get into what that person’s life expectancy was, what the person’s work life expectancy was. We are permitted to recover for loss of parental guidance and counseling, and that's something that's obvious when you have small children. It’s presumed that once a child reaches 21, where there's no longer a legal obligation to support the child, that there is no loss of parental guidance or financial support for that child. The family has the right to offer evidence to show that in fact the child would have continued to receive money or was continuing to receive support. But we will present to the court every item of damage that we can, and we’ll try to maximize it, and we’ll try our best to justify the highest award that we can possibly attain for our client.