Damages in DC survival action cases can be complicated. The survival actions in DC are what happens prior to the death themselves. It is conscious pain and suffering and medical bills accrued before death. Those are the two main areas of economic and non-economic loss. There is also a pre-impact terror, which is if somebody knows an accident is about to happen and they cannot avoid the accident in however much time between the time they first realized the accident is going to happen and the time the accident does happen. Pre-impact terror and that is also a calculatable area of conscious pain and suffering. To learn more, contact a professional DC attorney.
The evidence depends on what happened. A person needs the police report if it is a car accident and they need the medical record if there is malpractice involved. A person needs accident reports if there is a construction accident case, they need statements from people who are there, they need the medical records, the EMS records to determine if there is evidence of conscious pain and suffering.
A person sues for money when they bring a survival action. It is a civil action and that is the only thing they can recover in a wrongful death situation. If a person factors in what happened and they allocate a monetary amount to the pain and suffering somebody went through, it is the best way to think about how long the pain and suffering lasted and what the nature of the pain and suffering was. If somebody lives for four years on a failure diagnose case with ongoing pain, that would be something that a jury could factor in when calculating damages in a DC survival action case.
Severity of the pain and length of time are the two factors that go into calculating DC damages in DC survival actions. There is not an objective test for how pain and suffering is measured because it is a non-economic damage.
Unfortunately, the statute provides inadequate compensation in a wrongful death action for the things like sorrow and grief, the survivorship action. However, it can provide for an additional measure of compensation to the people who were left behind as a result of the catastrophe that resulted in a death.
The economic damages in terms of the medical bills include the ambulance ride, any surgeries that someone undergoes, and their time in the hospitals. These can be very expensive. Any medical bills are considered an economic damage.
Typically, if a person goes to a funeral home, they give an itemized bill which would include the hearse, the burial, the plot, the service itself, the embalming, the fixing up of the corpse, and all of these constitute an economic damage. Unfortunately, it is an expensive process.
Because these actions are statutory in nature and not the common law, it is important to work with someone who has the necessary knowledge in calculating the appropriate measure of damages in a DC survival action case. A lot of needless turmoil can be avoided if a person works with an attorney who could help assess the amount of potential damages that could be recovered.
