Losing a loved one is difficult, but we all understand that life ends with death, especially when the cause is old age or an illness. However, the pain doubles when a loved one dies due to someone else’s negligence. As a matter of fact, having the knowledge that your loved one died because of someone else’s actions can be a devastating experience.
Fortunately, you can hire a lawyer to get compensation for the loss. This situation usually calls for a wrongful death lawyer to represent your case in court.
What is Negligence?
Usually, wrongful death is caused by someone’s negligence. So, you should know what negligence is about. Generally, negligence is defined as the failure to provide the standard level of care that any other medical care provider would have exercised under the same circumstances.
Negligence is the product of carelessness resulting in personal harm or damage. Now, when it comes to wrongful death cases, not every wrongful death is caused by the negligence of a doctor or medical care provider.
For instance, negligence can also be caused by a neighbor who failed to restrain their dog when they knew they would attack. The dog might bite anyone, causing injury. The dog owner, in this scenario, can be held accountable as they failed to restrain their dog and keep it on a leash.
The important thing to keep in mind is that negligence is the primary cause of all personal injury cases, including wrongful death.
How to Prove Negligence?
Now, if you believe that you have lost your loved one due to someone else’s negligence, the first thing you must do is to get in touch with a wrongful death lawyer to get professional advice. The lawyer will review the case and look at the details to decide whether or not negligence was involved.
Usually, in court, you are required to prove that the death of your loved one occurred due to someone’s negligence by providing the following aspects:
Negligence of Duty: You must prove that the defendant was negligent of their legal duty to the injured person or the dead loved one.
Breach of Duty: You must prove that the defendant breached the standards of their duty due to a lack of action.
Causation: With the help of a lawyer, you must prove that the actions of the defendant caused harm or death.
Damages: You must prove that the actions of the defendant caused harm or injury or damage to property
Now, if you cannot prove in court all of these different aspects that we discussed above, you might not have valid points to sue the defendant in court. The above-mentioned aspects apply to all negligence cases, such as dog bites, personal injury, and wrongful death of your loved one.
Medical Malpractice vs. Wrongful Death
Many people who lose a loved one don’t know the difference between medical malpractice and wrongful death. Medical malpractice refers to a heightened standard of negligence that is placed on medical care providers.
The thing is that medical care providers are held to a higher standard of care. So, if they commit medical malpractice – they can potentially cause many problems for a plaintiff.
For instance, the medical care providers can cause death or decapitation. They might also cause amputation or cancer. It all depends on what the medical care providers do. It could even be as complex as injecting someone with a radioactive formula for some MRI or CT scan that was too high of a dose.
This higher dose can potentially cause severe damage or harm to someone. So, in a medical malpractice type of claim, the plaintiff is simply suing a medical care provider for deviating from the standards and breaching their heightened duty of care, which caused serious damages.
On the other hand, a wrongful death case is a case where someone simply caused your death. Now, a medical malpractice case can be a wrongful death case, but a wrongful death case doesn’t necessarily have to be a medical malpractice case.
Potential Signs You Need A Wrongful Death Lawyer
Now that we know what contributes to negligence and what the difference between wrongful death and medical malpractice is, you should know about the potential signs that indicate that you need to hire a wrongful death lawyer.
Homicide Victim
You should get in touch with a wrongful death lawyer if your loved one lost their life in homicide. Yes, you read this right. A homicide can count as a wrongful death, too. Negligence can be as deliberate as homicide. Why, you might ask? According to law, everyone carries the “duty of care,” including the duty of not harming others.
On that note, if your loved one was murdered and a victim of homicide, you can file a civil suit for wrongful death.
Car Accident
Of course, accidents can happen. But only because accidents can happen every day, it doesn’t mean that you cannot hold anyone accountable. In most accidents, there is someone who has been negligent and hence causing the accident. So, if you lose someone as a result of an accident, you can get in touch with a wrongful death lawyer and sue the at-fault driver.
Medical Malpractice
It is possible to lose a loved one due to the negligence of a medical care provider. There is loads of variety when it comes to medical malpractice, where medical providers might breach their duty of care and cause someone’s death. Now, this aspect perfectly explains why healthcare providers have insurance, known as medical malpractice insurance.
Of course, with the help of an attorney, you will have to prove in court that the death of a loved one occurred due to medical malpractice or the negligence of the healthcare provider.
Final Thoughts
There can be instances where loved ones are killed on their jobs. Some professions are as dangerous as others, such as construction and law enforcement. On that note, not everyone who dies on their job is the victim of wrongful death. Again, you will have to work closely with a wrongful death lawyer to prove in court that the death of your loved one was caused by someone else’s negligence.
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