Loss of Consortium in Wrongful Death: Standing, Proof, and the Apportionment Trap
Loss of consortium claims in wrongful death cases require careful attention to who has standing, what must be proven beyond the decedent's…
Category
Wrongful Death
Survival actions, damages frameworks
Punitive Damages in Wrongful Death: Standards, Evidence, and Due-Process Limits
Not all states allow punitive damages in wrongful-death actions, and in those that do, BMW v. Gore and State Farm v. Campbell impose a cons…
Allocating a Global Wrongful-Death and Survival Settlement
How you split a global settlement between the wrongful-death and survival claims, and among heirs, quietly decides the family's net recover…
Valuing the Wrongful Death of a Child When There Is No Lost Income
Damages models built on lost economic support collapse when the decedent is a young child who earned nothing. Here is how to frame value ar…
Valuing the Wrongful-Death Case With No Lost Wages
When the decedent had no paycheck, the defense opens low. The counsel who build the household-services model and a restrained non-economic…
When the Wrongful-Death Limitations Clock Starts Running
Wrongful-death and survival claims run on different clocks, and latent-cause deaths, statutes of repose, and the one-action rule can bar a…
Proving Conscious Pain and Suffering in the Survival Claim
Where the decedent survived the injury by minutes or hours, the survival claim carries a distinct and often significant recovery. Building…
Fisher v. Lee and the Constitutional Attack on Wrongful-Death Caps
An Oregon appeals court struck the $500,000 noneconomic cap as applied under the remedy clause. How Fisher v. Lee reopens the as-applied ch…
The Six-Month Clock on Public-Entity Fatality Claims
Suing a city, county, or transit agency after a fatality means clearing a claims-presentation deadline measured in months. Here is how the…
Standing and the One-Action Rule: The Procedural Traps That Sink Wrongful-Death Cases
In a death case, who may sue and how they must sue can end the matter before damages are ever reached. A look at standing, capacity, and th…
After the Survival-Damages Sunset: Rebuilding the Death Case
California's four-year window for pre-death pain-and-suffering damages in survival actions closed on January 1, 2026. The value of a death…
Building the Wrongful-Death Damages Model
Fatal-injury files carry two claims, several statutory beneficiaries, and a settlement that must survive lien and allocation review. A rest…