Wrongful death damages are the financial damages given to the surviving heirs of a person whose death resulted from another person's negligence or wrongful act. However, does that imply that one lawsuit is initiated to claim all the possible losses, including funeral expenses and the victim’s final suffering? The situation in California is more organized, including two different legal paths: wrongful death and survival action claims.

In this article, you will learn the four major categories of damages under the two legal paths that families may recover in California and how these damages are obtained. The California Code of Civil Procedure, especially Section 377.60, which specifies the persons entitled to bring a claim and the legal difference between an action that recompenses the heirs with their loss and an action that recompenses the deceased with the harm the victim personally suffered, is the basis of this analysis.

The Wrongful Death Claim Category

By filing a wrongful death lawsuit, you are asking to be compensated for the losses that you and other living family members have personally incurred because your loved one is no longer here. This assertion is regarding the effects of the demise on the survivors. 

The damages obtained in such a lawsuit are to restore your family to the financial state in which you would have been had your loved one not died, and to offer monetary compensation for the immense loss of your relationship. These damages fall into two distinct categories, economic and non-economic.

  1. Economic Damages

Economic damages are the physical, quantifiable monetary losses your family has suffered because of the death of your loved one. These are not hypothetical, but are evidence-based, documented, and in most cases, the word of financial experts who can extrapolate these losses throughout a lifetime. All the parts are evaluated meticulously to create a picture of your family's financial position.

The Loss of Financial Support

The most fundamental aspect of economic damages is the loss of the direct financial assistance your loved one would have offered. This is an estimation that goes way beyond their salary. Your loved one will have their earning capacity projected by a court with the assistance of forensic economists, over what would have been their natural working life. 

This is an in-depth examination of their age, health, education, career path, and promotion prospects to develop a realistic image of the future income that is now lost. This is their salary and any bonus, commission, or other income you and your family were counting on to pay your mortgage, schooling, and other living costs.

The Loss of Future Benefits and Gifts

In addition to the direct wages, the court also considers the worth of lost employment benefits that, in many cases, make up a substantial portion of a person's overall compensation. This would be the value of a 401(k) or pension plan that your loved one was making contributions to and any matching funds the employer was putting in, which are now lost. It also incorporates the high cost of a family health insurance plan that can now be lost, and you are left to seek new coverage, which is usually more expensive. 

The loss of these benefits is a real and severe hardship in terms of finances. Moreover, this category considers the loss of gifts or financial aid that you could reasonably have been expected to receive. This is not about little birthday gifts, but the scheduled financial achievements, such as a parental contribution to a child's college education or a down payment on a first house, that have been wiped out.

Funeral and Burial Expenses

During the first days following your loss, your family is hit with an immediate and significant expense of a funeral and burial. The law understands that such costs are a natural and predictable outcome of the defendant's wrongful act. Thus, your wrongful death claim will provide you with an opportunity to be fully refunded for all the reasonable expenses that you incurred when laying your loved one to rest.

This covers the actual cost of the funeral home services, the casket or urn, the burial site or cremation services, the headstone or grave marker, and the memorial service itself. This is not a financial burden that you need to shoulder, and the law provides that the concerned party can be answerable to it.

The Value of Foregone Household Services

The legislation is not wrong in recognizing that the contribution made by an individual to a home has a tangible financial worth. Consider all the chores your loved one did that you must do alone or pay someone to do. This covers childcare, which can be valued at the market rate of employing a nanny or daycare. 

It entails housework, such as lawn mowing and gardening, as well as minor repairs that would otherwise need to be done by contracting a plumber, electrician, or handyman. It also includes cooking, cleaning, handling family finances, and transportation.

A financial expert can analyze these missing contributions, and a dollar value can be given based on the cost of employing professionals to carry out the same services, so that you can be compensated for the massive practical help your loved one rendered daily.

  1. Non-Economic Damages 

Although the financial gap is big, the law also appreciates that the most significant losses are sometimes intangible. Non-economic damages are given to compensate you and your family for losing the human relationship you experienced with your loved one. No mathematical equation is applied in this calculation, and it is the wisdom and experience of a judge or a jury to decide on a reasonable and fair amount to compensate for the magnitude of your personal loss.

Loss of Companionship, Comfort, and Society

This is the deepest sector of non-economic loss. It is a recognition that the individual who occupied your life has passed away. Friendship is losing a companion with whom you share your day-to-day experiences, pleasures, and pains. Comfort is the lack of the one you had to rely on when you needed comfort and support, and to lean on at challenging moments. 

Society is the deprivation of your loved one in your social life, the person you were attending events with, who was a part of your social image as a couple or family. This destruction is in recognition that a pillar of your life has been taken away.

Loss of Love and Affection

This is unlike companionship and focuses on the loss of the special emotional attachment that you had. The core of your relationship was the recognition and compensation for the loss of love, care, and affection. To the child who has lost a parent, it is the loss of that unconditional love and caregiving presence. To a spouse, it is the deprivation of the tremendous emotional bond that characterized the relationship. This harm acknowledges the fact that your family heart has been broken.

Loss of Spousal Consortium

Loss of consortium is a legal term used specifically to refer to the loss of the complete gamut of the marital relationship in the case of a surviving spouse or a registered domestic partner. Although it also involves the lack of sexual intimacy, it is a much wider range. It includes the deprivation of companionship, assistance, and love peculiar to the marital relationship. It is the reparation of the annihilation of the partnership—the loss of the person you created a life with.

Loss of Training and Guidance

When a child loses a parent, they lose more than an adult to take care of them; they lose a lifetime teacher. This harm is meant to recompense a child for the moral, intellectual, and practical instruction their parent would have provided. This involves assistance with schoolwork, guidance on life choices, training in practical skills, and molding their character and values. The court understands that such loss will affect a child's development and future, and he/she is supposed to be compensated.

The Survival Action Claim

The law no longer dwells on the losses that you have suffered, but on the losses that your loved one had incurred before their death. California law permits a separate and frequently concurrent action known as survival. The family members do not make this claim to their own advantage, but on behalf of the deceased through their estate. Essentially, the personal injury claim survives your loved one's death; your loved one would have survived the incident had they not died.

This is a legal action to compensate your loved one for the damages he suffered from the time of the wrongful act until the time of his death. The recovery of a survival action is paid to the estate and will be shared with the legal heirs.

  1. The Pre-Death Damages of the Deceased

A survival action mainly aims to reclaim the economic losses your beloved loved one experienced before their demise. These are all the medical costs that were incurred due to the fatal injury. The ambulance, emergency room, hospitalization, surgeries, and any other medical services that the estate can recover in an attempt to save their life are recoverable. The costs of attempting to reverse the harm are incurred by the defendant who caused the harm.

This is the same case with your loved one, who did not die immediately; they might not have been able to work at that time. A survival action allows the estate to recover the wages and income the deceased lost between injury and death.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of a survival action is the victim’s pre-death pain and suffering. The California law did not permit recovery of pain and suffering of a victim who passed away before the case was settled for many years. However, this was temporarily altered by a historic bill, Senate Bill 447. 

SB 447 (Chapter 44, Statutes of 2021) permits damages for a decedent’s conscious pain, suffering, or disfigurement to be recovered by the decedent’s personal representative or successor in interest in certain cases. The statute applies to actions granted a specified preference before January 1, 2022, and to actions filed on or after January 1, 2022, and before January 1, 2026, subject to the statutory conditions. Courts and practitioners continue to interpret the new provisions, and the Legislature will decide in 2026 whether to make the change permanent.

This implies that the estate can claim damages for the fear, terror, and physical pain that your loved one went through during their last hours or days, as long as they were aware they were suffering. This legal shift gives a potent new avenue of holding wrongdoers fully responsible for the human cost of their actions.

  1. Punitive Damages

Punitive or exemplary damages are meant to penalize the defendant because he or she has indeed committed an outrageous act and to discourage the defendant and others from repeating the same act. One crucial rule you should know in California: punitive damages are not obtainable in a wrongful death action per se. They are only pursued by filing a survival action by the estate.

To be granted punitive damages, you must demonstrate through clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. Malice implies that the accused wanted to harm or they worked with a willful and conscious indifference to the rights and safety of other people. Oppression means that they put your beloved one in unfair and cruel suffering without conscious consideration of their rights. 

Persons Who Can Sue In A Wrongful Death Case

California law is quite strict regarding the person who is an eligible heir. The California Code of Civil Procedure 377.60 provides a right to file to a specific group of individuals, which is usually determined by the relationship between the person who has died and the individual.

The spouse, the registered domestic partner of the deceased, and the children. These people are said to be in the closest legal position to claim the losses they have incurred. If the children of the deceased person are also deceased, the grandchildren are entitled to take the role of their parents and bring a wrongful death suit. This will make sure that the coming generation of immediate offspring will be able to pursue justice.

In the absence of any surviving spouse, domestic partner, children, or grandchildren, the law then turns to other people who would then inherit the property of the deceased according to the California laws of intestate succession. This is usually composed of the parents of the deceased, and in case they are not alive, then the deceased's siblings.

The law also offers an avenue through which some financial dependents can make a claim, regardless of whether they fit into the above categories. This can include: 

  • A putative spouse (a person who had a good faith belief that he was married lawfully to the deceased) 
  • Children of a putative spouse and stepchildren, as long as they can show that they were financially reliant on the deceased for at least 50%
  • An underage child who resided in the house of the deceased and was under their care

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What compensation can be received for a survival action?

To be precise, the survival cause of action is the estate of the deceased victim recovering the harm that the victim themselves suffered before their death. It covers any personal injury claim that the victim would have had if he had not died. The damages that are available under a survival action differ from those under a wrongful death claim and may include the economic damages that the victim suffered between the time of injury and death. This covers their ultimate medical bills and their lost earnings during the time.

A survivor can also claim non-economic damages under the temporary provisions of Senate Bill 447 concerning the conscious pain and suffering of the victim before their death. Also, survival action is the sole vehicle with which you can claim punitive damages to punish a defendant due to malice, oppression, or fraud. Compensation recovered is paid to the estate, and heirs receive it according to the law.

What does not fall under the damages of a wrongful death claim?

When deciding the amount of your losses, the jury is told explicitly that it cannot consider or award damages for some things. These are grief, sorrow, mental suffering, or personal pain and suffering. The law poses the wrongful death case as compensation for the loss of the relationship and its benefits, and not as a solution to your emotional trauma.

What has been the recent law reform in wrongful death cases?

Senate Bill 447 has shifted the survival action temporarily. In the past, when an individual lost his life before their personal injury case was adjudicated, the claim of pain and suffering damages was lost as well. This provided a scenario whereby the defendant may end up having a lesser financial responsibility in case their victim succumbs to their injuries instead of surviving. 

This was taken care of by Senate Bill 447, which gave the estate of a victim authority to compensate the deceased for pre-death pain, suffering, and disfigurement with non-economic damages. This implies that the estate will now be able to get compensation for what was experienced by the victim during their last moments, hours, or days.

However, you should realize this is a temporary change; it applies to all causes of action taken between January 1, 2022, and January 1, 2026.

Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer for a Confidential Consultation Near Me

The death of a loved one is an intolerable burden, and you should not have to deal with the legal system in addition to it. California legislation on wrongful death and survival is complicated. To claim the full compensation your family deserves, you should have a profound knowledge of these two legal paths.

At The LA Personal Injury Law Firm, our skilled Los Angeles personal injury lawyers understand wrongful death laws in California and will work tirelessly to recover every compensation your family is entitled to. We can help you, and you can find out by contacting us today at 310-935-0089 or by filling out our online form.