Wrongful Death

A wrongful death is a fatality resulting from the negligence, inaction or illicit action by another party which may involve a business entity, a combination, a company or an individual person. Every year, a large number of wrongful deaths take place in UK and thousands of cases are filed in the court. Each case differs from the other and the compensation amount that the relatives of the deceased receive depends upon the manner in which the victim died and actions taken by the defendants. Some of the causes that lead to wrongful deaths include:

Vehicle accidents: In such accidents including car collisions, airplane catastrophes, boat capsizing and pedestrian accidents, the drivers, owners or vehicle manufacturers fail to perform their responsibility to take care of other people’s safety, thus causing other person’s death.

Using defective products: The manufacturers, distributors and designers of a product may be found responsible for a death if the person died due to using their defective product.

Medical Malpractice: Medical professionals have specific standard of giving cure to the patients. Any negligence or misjudgement of the patient’s ailment may lead to his or her death.

Work related accidents: It is the responsibility of the company owners to make their office premises safe to work for the employees. If they fail to give a hazard free environment to their employees, then they are liable for their employee’s death while on work.

Animal attacks: Pet owners and public authorities are responsible for taking care that the animals do not attack people, otherwise, they case can be filed against them in case the animal’s behaviour causes a person’s death.

The relatives of the deceased person may file a compensation claim against the person or party responsible for their loved one’s death and seek justice in the court. The period of court litigations may range from 6 months to many years and the compensation amount may depend upon the person’s manner of death, the time period between the accident and the person’s death and the physical, mental and emotional stress the person had to undergo before dying. The compensation amount of your case may also depend upon how convincingly you place your case in the court and the amount may increase to a great extent if the family members of the dead person were financially dependant upon him or her.

In order to represent your case of wrongful death convincingly in the court, you need to hire a professional, qualified and experienced solicitor.
Unlike court litigations, which may range from six months to several years to conclude, this type of alternative dispute resolution may last in just a few meetings. If both parties have agreed on their first talk, this would mean that the case is near to resolution.