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…
Category
Wrongful Death
Survival actions, damages frameworks
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…
Structuring Damages and Beneficiaries in Wrongful-Death Claims
Wrongful death and survival are two claims, not one. Separating the beneficiaries, the damages models, and the lien exposure early decides…