Wrongful Death Claims Due To The Death Of A Pedestrian Because Of A Motor Vehicle Accident
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-06-24 14:02:48 | Word Count: 878
All too many pedestrians die every year in a car accident. Some of these deaths will turn into a wrongful death case. These are complex claims which are often powerfully defended by insurance companies and entail complicated medical, accident reconstruction and legal issues.
For any vehicle accident case, insurance company adjustors, if they make any settlement offer at all, are going to make the offer dependent not on the victim's damages but instead on the financial risk faced by the insurance company. There are several ways in which insurance companies make an effort to reduce their risk. For example, these cases often involve (1) denials of liability by the defendants (driver, employer, others who contributed to the accident) and the insurance companies insuring the defendants; (2) insurance issues (including the unavailability of insurance, underinsurance, multiple insured defendants and excess insurance); (3) economic issues (including whether the victim was married and had any children (especially minor children), the age and general health of the victim, and the loss of future earning capacity) that influence the worth of the case; and (4) non-economic issues that affect case valuation. An attorney handling one of these matters thus should have the skill and experience to deal successfully with the many issues that will likely arise in the case. Consider the following:
[ advertisement ]
This pedestrian accident occured a brief time after 6 in the morning. The police investigating the accident found that a bystander had seen the vehicle speeding shortly before the accident happened. The police also reported that the vehicle was low on break fluid and had a dirty windshield (which can affect the driver's ability to see ahead) but did not have any cleaning fluid for the windshield.
The victim in this motor vehicle accident lawsuit was a 66 year old female pedestrian. Thrown 27 feet before hitting the road, the victim suffered numerous injuries. She had a clavicle fracture. She had an ankle fracture. She had several rib fractures. She even had skull fractures. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she died from her injuries. She was survived by her family that consisted of a husband, five children, and six grandchildren. The law firm that represented the family of the victim was able to report reaching a settlement in the amount of $725,000.
A motor vehicle driven by a woman in the early part of the evening fled the scene after striking a pedestrian. The victim - a man who was the father of two children and who held down part-time work - died as a result of the accident. The woman who was the cause of the accident was located by the investigating police officers. The woman was criminally charged. The charges included leaving the scene of an accident. The charges also included the negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in a death. A settlement for the amount of $1,150,000 was reported by the law firm that handled the matter
While sharing a number of similarities these cases also differ in several respects. The law firms that handled each of these cases accomplished sizeable recoveries for the families of the victims. Note, however, that the settlement in the second case was more than 50% greater than that in the first. What factors could explain that difference? Well, consider that the victim was 66 years old in the first case. While the report of the case does not specify this point, it is likely that she was retired and had no real loss of earning capacity. The plaintiff man in the second case was working even if only part-time. The case report, however, does not indicate his age or how much he earned. Nor does it offer a loss of earning capacity calculation. But this alone, especially if his children were minors, might account for difference.
Additional factors that may have influenced the sum of the settlement
included the amount of insurance coverage available in each case and the verdict history in the jurisdictions where each matter would have been tried.
The lower the risk an insurance company adjuster believes is faced by taking the case to trial, the smaller the offer they will make, if they make any offer at all. Handling pedestrian death cases requires experience and skill. An attorney representing the victim's family should not be in a rush to reach a settlement. Indeed, typically the best way to handle these cases is to conduct a comprehensive investigation, have a deep understanding of the accident scene, know the way in which witnesses describe the accident, have a sense of how the parties and the witnesses will be perceived by a jury, and have a good knowledge of the range of awards normally awarded for similar cases by juries in the jurisdiction where the claim will need to be tried.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting car accident cases. To learn more about how a pedestrian accident attorney can help you and about other vehicle accident cases including fatal car accident cases visit the websites
