- Wrongful death claim
Wrongful death is a claim in
common law jurisdictions against a person who can be held liable for a death. The claim is brought in acivil action , usually by close relatives, as enumerated bystatute . Undercommon law , a dead person cannot bring a suit, and this created a legal hole in which activities that resulted in a person's injury would result in civil sanction but activities that resulted in a person's death would not.The
standard of proof in the United States is typicallypreponderance of the evidence as opposed toclear and convincing orbeyond a reasonable doubt . InAustralia and theUnited Kingdom , it is 'on the balance of probabilities'. For this reason, it is often easier for a family to seek retribution against someone who kills a family member throughtort than a criminal prosecution. It should be noted, however, that the two actions are not mutually exclusive; a person may be prosecutedcriminally for causing a person's death (whether in the form ofmurder ,manslaughter ,criminally negligent homicide , or some other theory) and that person can also be sued civilly in a wrongful death action (as in theO.J. Simpson cases).In most, if not all common law jurisdictions, there was no
common law right to recover civil damages for the wrongful death of a person. However, many jurisdictions have now enacted statutes to create a right to such recovery. The issue of liability will be determined by thetort law of a given state.See
Lord Campbell's Act for the origin of wrongful death liability.Conditions for filing wrongful death claim
The death must have been caused, in whole or in part, by the
defendant 's conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill the victim. The defendant must have been deemed negligent or strictly liable for the victim's death. Also the deceased has dependent party such as family members who have suffered from emotional and monetary damages as a result of the death.
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