Wrongful Death Suits: The Hardest Lawsuit To File
Michael Babboni
Personal Injury
It can be very hard to deal with how bureaucratic death is these days. When a loved one dies, you have to plan out a funeral or a memorial within a matter of days, you have to read the will and settle the estate, you’ve got to deal with the death certificate and the cost of the burial or the cremation, and all the while you’re keenly aware that someone who is important to you has just passed on.But what if your loved one’s passing wasn’t a natural result of a disease? What if your loved one died because of someone’s negligence or, even worse, because of someone’s intentional actions? A wrongful death suit may end up dragging out an already long and painful process, but it may also be your only chance to get something in return for your loss.
You Can’t Leave It All To The Government
For certain crimes, the state and federal governments may need your permission to press criminal charges, but after you weigh in it’s their case from that point on. You may need to take the witness stand if you know something important about the case, but aside from that you don’t even have to attend the hearings unless you want to.
However, this isn’t true about a wrongful death suit. Wrongful death is a civil suit, and it has to be filed by the close living relatives of the person in question. You and your lawyers have to be directly involved throughout the entire process, a process which can take months or even years to reach a result.
Oftentimes a civil suit will be postponed, or tolled, until a related criminal case reaches a verdict. That means the civil case will actively drag out the time you spend in courtrooms, and yet such cases are often little more than repeats of the criminal case, with all the same evidence and all the same witnesses.
Nevertheless, the civil case fulfills an important role in the justice system. Criminal cases obtain justice for the community with a prison sentence, a fine, or possibly even the death penalty, but the civil case is the only way the victim and his or her survivors can receive some compensation.
Closing The Book
It’s often said by poet and pragmatist alike that revenge is a hollow thing, empty and lifeless. You can get revenge or else you can see justice passed upon the party that wronged you, but it doesn’t bring your loved one back to life. It doesn’t fill the hole that person left behind.
Still, this viewpoint doesn’t completely grasp what it feels like to know that someone is directly responsible for taking your loved one away. It adds a certain kind of anger, an anger that’s hard to let go of while that person remains free and unpunished. A wrongful death suit can never fully compensate for the loss of a loved one, but it can at least release that anger and bring a real sense of closure to an otherwise rote and bureaucratic experience.
If your loved one lived or died in the St. Petersburg neighborhood of southwest Florida, then you should contact the St. Pete Lawyer for a free case review. While we can’t bring you closer to your passed loved ones, we will do our best to see that you are compensated for your loss.