Types of Damages in Greenville Wrongful Death Cases

It is important to understand the types of damages available to an individual after they have suffered the wrongful death of a loved one in Greenville. The damages and recovery can include the expenses for care and treatment and the medical costs for the incident leading up to the injury that resulted in a death.

They can also cover any conscious pain and suffering if there was any in between the injury and the death. Funeral expenses would also be allowed as well as the present value of the compensation that would be reasonably expected for the individual if they were a main earner of the family.

Another set of damages that are a little bit more subjective, but included in North Carolina, is the services protection, care, and assistance to the decedent, society, companionship, comfort, guidance, and kindly advice to the decedent or the person entitled to receive the damages. To best understand what types of damages are available in Greenville for wrongful death actions, it is important to contact a compassionate wrongful death attorney who can fight for their client’s rights to compensation.

Damages Considerations

Only the administrator of the estate or the executor of the estate would file the lawsuit with an attorney for damages in a Greenville wrongful death action. That individual would be named specifically for the wrongful death action or may have already been named if an estate is not open prior to instituting the act for wrongful action of the wrongful death.

The most common types of damages are the medical expenses as they relate to the treatment prior to the death, any kind of physical pain and suffering resulting from the injury up until the death, and the non-economic damages, which is society, loss of companionship, and other things that may seem a little bit intangible, but are also recoverable in a wrongful death.

Losses Resulting in Recoverable Damages

There are a few typical types of damages available for recovery in Greenville wrongful death actions, depending on the losses someone suffered.

Loss of Companionship

Loss of companionship would be the idea that someone no longer has the ability to be close to this individual, whether it is their brother, father, mother, or sister. This is a loss that the jury is allowed to compensate that gets paid for. Loss of love and affection would also be considered under the loss of companionship.

Grief would not necessarily be a recoverable damage per se, but it would be included in a loss of companionship damages.

Loss of Society

Loss of society would be the same as the loss of an individual in the household and a loss of an individual as a leader of the home. There is not as distinct a definition for it, the jury must use their common sense to determine what that would be.

Loss of Future Income

Determining loss of future income is the consideration of what the individual earned prior to the death and taken into account whether the individual was going to be close to the end of their career or at the beginning, and what they would be expected to make during their lifetime. Everything that would be asked for in kinds of future damages would be reduced to present value.

An expert economist, often a retired economic professor, would study the loss of earnings and income from the individual and project out a future loss determining those types of damages in a Greenville wrongful death case.

A lot of factors may be often overlooked in these cases in Greenville. In addition to the income lost from a job, there is also what income is lost for household services and things that the individual does around the house that is quantified as a part of the lost wage. Those factors are very subjective factors often calculated through interviews with other family members. There is not an actual formula for that. It is something that has to be discussed as a part of the overall story of the case. An expert cannot conduct a loss of companionship, but that would include more testimonies from witnesses, which would be from other family members or friends.

Loss of Consortium

Loss of consortium would be, for example, the loss of the love and affection of a spouse.

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Contacting an Attorney

The family would often be burdened with funeral expenses following a wrongful death in Greenville, and if the person that was killed was a wage earner, the family may have a great loss of income that they were not planning on. Other things that go into play are life insurance proceeds and dealing with how that is recovered as quickly as possible. There are a lot of things going on for a family that just experienced wrongful death, so it is wise to have an experienced wrongful death attorney to deal with it.

Greenville attorneys can help with these burdens by guiding the family, holding the family’s hand so to speak, and making sure everything is done in the way that it is needed to be done to preserve all the claims. Most importantly, they will be there to offer advise and counsel as the family goes through this difficult time.