A wrongful death claim is a lawsuit filed in civil courts that seek to get money from those who caused a vehicle accident causing a fatality. Most wrong wrongful death claims (also known as wrongful death lawsuits) in Ontario are connected to fatalities caused by car accidents where the driver was careless or negligent. According to Ontario Family Law, family members of the deceased may be eligible to file a wrongful lawsuit. These people generally include spouses and children but not extended family members. Depending on how negligent or careless the driver was, a criminal lawsuit may also be filed against the driver.
Compensation Criteria
Determining the amount of money to request for the death of a loved one is difficult. There is no amount of money that will ever make up for the pain of that loss. Trying to put a dollar value on someone’s life is delicate, usually painful and difficult.
The goal of a personal injury lawyer in wrongful death lawsuit is to come up with a compensation amount that provides an element of justice for those who have been left behind. Grieving ones of the person fatally injured in an accident will be facing the emotional challenges and perhaps even financial hardships. Ontario Law states that those affected by financial hardships may legally go after the person responsible for the fatal attack for compensation for those financial hardships.Whatever the final amount determined, the insurance company of the person responsible for causing the accident will pay the compensation
Types of Compensation
Compensation is a wrongful death lawsuit may include a variety of supports.
Financial Support: The victim’s family may qualify for pecuniary loss which would cover any financial loss the family has suffers as a result of the death of the victim. Inflation and future projected earnings are taken into consideration when determining this amount.
Loss of Care, Guidance and Companionship: Provisions are determined to compensate for the loss of care, guidance and companionship the family member filing the suit would reasonably expect to have had the victim not died. This includes the loss of potential discipline, moral direct and teaching; the loss of cleaning, transportation, meal preparation and household duties; the loss of special bonds, milestones and moments. Consideration of the relationship, age of impacted family, age of victim and living arrangements of the claimant is taken into consideration.
Actual Expenses: These include expenses for medication and treatment required to treat the victim, as well as reasonable burial and funeral costs.
Unfortunately, under Ontario Law there is no provision to determine a financial value exclusively to the extreme pain and devastation the family members of the fatally injured person may experience. This can be a difficult knowledge to accept by those who are filing a wrongful death lawsuit.
Eligibility
Family of the fatally injured person are typically the individuals who qualify for compensation. These include the spouse, children, brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents and grandchildren. Compensation from a wrongful death lawsuit belongs to the family of the victim and do not go to pay the victims potential creditors.