The proper recovery under the Wrongful Death Act in a DC wrongful death claim by a spouse is the amount of financial loss suffered by the spouse. But first, what is a wrongful death claim? You may be eligible to make a DC wrongful death claim if you are familially related to the decedent. Moreover, the decedent must have been the victim of someone else’s negligent or intentional conduct. In Washington, D.C., a contributory negligence defense bars recovery by a plaintiff if a jury finds that the victim was even 1% negligent in causing their injuries. This means that your family member must have had the right to pursue a personal injury claim had they survived the incident for you to have a claim.
Under the common law, that right to recover would be extinguished with the loss of life of the victim. However, statutory law enables that right to survive via a survival action. DC caselaw requires the personal representative appointed for the survival action to prevail on their respective claim for a wrongful death claimant to recover successfully on your claim as the spouse. Of course, if your deceased spouse appointed you as the personal representative of their estate, you may be able to recover for both. However, note that DC courts will not award for double jeopardy. This means you cannot recover for the same thing twice. An example of compensable damage that overlaps between a wrongful death claim and a survival action might be funeral costs.
As touched on above, a spouse is generally eligible to file a wrongful death claim in DC. The DC statute limits those not especially close familially from compensation. The rationale is that people should not be entitled to recover who do not really know the decedent or rely on them financially, like a cousin. An example of a DC wrongful death claim by a spouse where a spouse may be entitled to substantial compensation is when it is a stay-at-home parent who lacks skills to gain meaningful employment because they have spent the last 15 years raising children. Now, that surviving spouse might have three young children to support and no means of doing so. This is precisely the situation that a wrongful death claim can support.
Under Hudson v. Lazarus, it is well established that double recovery from the same elements of damage should be avoided. In other words, if you are the personal representative and have already sought compensation for your spouse’s lost future income, you cannot now recover for the same damages in a wrongful death action. The purpose of this claim is to compensate you for your losses and to make you whole. The purpose is not to make you better off than you were before the loss of your loved one. In some instances, punitive damages are in order. However, the purpose of punitive damages is to punish a defendant and deter future action by other potential tortfeasors. Even then, it is not necessarily to provide a windfall to the plaintiff.
Accordingly, you are eligible to file a wrongful death claim if you are the surviving spouse of the decedent who died due to the wrongful conduct of a third party. As one exception to this rule, if you were responsible for their death, you would be barred from recovery under Slayer statutes.
There is some confusion regarding statutes of limitation in DC wrongful death claims by a spouse. For the typical personal injury claim, the statute is three years from the date of injury. That date may be tolled if the injury is not discovered until later, such as mesothelioma or an affliction from some other toxic substance. Meanwhile, until 2012, the statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim was just one year. For a case as serious as a wrongful death, you might expect the statute of limitations to be longer than the typical three years. However, that was not the case. Since 2012, the statute of limitations for spouses to make a claim is now two years.
In a survival action, the estate is entitled to recover an amount based on probable net future earnings. If that is the case in your loved one’s estate’s claim, then you will be unable to recover that type of damage in your claim. What you are entitled to as a spouse is dependent on the amount of financial loss from your deceased spouse’s death. We must consider the decedent’s expected life span when calculating damages for a survival action or a wrongful death claim. We must also account for your life expectancy for a wrongful death claim. The court will select whichever is shorter as the measuring stick for recoverable damages. The amounts recovered are the future contributions toward the maintenance of the spouse that the deceased likely would have made had the decedent not wrongfully died due to the conduct of the defendant.
Here’s a list of potential recoveries a spouse could seek under this rule:
Proving negligence in a wrongful death claim is the same as proving negligence in a claim if you were the one injured. But a DC wrongful death claim by a spouse will likely be proven during the survival action part of your case. Nevertheless, the rule for establishing negligence is the same. The general rule for establishing negligence, in any case, is that there must be the showing of:
For a DC wrongful death claim by a spouse, you must understand the importance of an attorney. From beginning to end, we will lead you through the complicated maze that is a wrongful death claim and fight so you can get the compensation you deserve. Your family has suffered a great deal of trauma because of the actions of another. Your road to justice starts here.
Call our leading personal injury attorneys today for a free consultation at (202) 331-7227.