Valuing Wrongful Death Cases
February 12th, 2012
As a georgia wrongful death lawyer, the hardest part of a wrongful death claim is properly valuing the claim for the jury and the client. This is because often, clients feel any wrongful death claim is worth millions of dollars. While this if often times true, an atlanta injury attorney knows that not every wrongful death claim is going to be a multi million dollar case. The first and often most important element that plays into the value of these claims is how old the plaintiff was at the time of death. Obviously, a plaintiff who is over 60 years old is going to have a smaller claim than one where the plaintiff is twenty five years old. This is because under Georgia law part of the damages recoverable is the value of the lost life.
The next element that is important in valuing wrongful death claims is what the plaintiff did for a living. This plays into the value of that persons life. This too makes since as the death of a doctor compared to the death of a cab driver would not have the same value from a lost future earnings perspective.
For example, recently a wrongful death case of an over 60 year old individual netted two million dollars. A verdict higher than the attorneys thought would be recovered given the plaintiff’s age. As a car accident lawyer in atlanta, we have handled many wrongful death cases resulting from car accidents, truck accidents and motorcycle accident claims throughout Atlanta and the rest of Georgia.
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