Wrongful Death Case Value

Answer:

Early on in wrongful death cases, we’ll have clients who want to know about the value of their case. Yesterday, I sat with a spouse who lost her husband while she was deposed for four or five hours, so it’s early in the litigation. That’s the first deposition that’s been taken. After a deposition, she wanted to know, “What’s the value of my case? Can I go for the maximum?” I told her the maximum is a trial, because the maximum is whatever a jury says your case is worth. There will be a lot of steps along the way. Finding out what the coverage is of the wrongdoer sometimes limits the recovery in the case. Sometimes there are things that are found out during the deposition stage where the case is weakened. It depends on how strong liability is, what the value of the non-economic losses are, pain and suffering, how many claimants there are, whether or not there is a loss of household services, and whether or not there is a lawsuit of accumulation or savings to the estate. If the person who dies was working, you can’t just recover their lost wages, but you can recover what they were saving. If they were a big saver, that makes that case and claim more valuable.The economic damages like that drive the value of the case, but so does the coverage because it’s easier to collect insurance coverage money than it is to try to collect from somebody personally. That’s why during his civil litigation, OJ Simpson bought his house here in Florida. He did that because Florida protects a homestead. You can’t put somebody outside of their home and collect the value of that homestead. It’s very difficult to collect from individuals, so insurance coverage often ends up, sadly, being the driving force in the value of a claim.