The Four Elements of Wrongful Death

When you are young and have your days filled with many exciting things you want to do you don’t have time to think about death. As a matter of fact, we rarely think of it unless somebody we know or a loved one dies suddenly. If this is the case, it is a wake up call that reminds us that none of us is going to live forever.

Thinking about death and its consequences is even more difficult when the death of somebody was caused by a person or an institution such as hospital. If this is the case, we are talking about wrongful death, which is something that a Hialeah Hospital accident lawyer deals with.

If you suspect that a loved one, a deceased, was victim of wrongful death, you need to consider the so-called four elements of wrongful death in order to be successful in your lawsuit against a doctor or a hospital. Here they are:

1. Negligence. If you have reasons to believe that the death of a loved one was caused by the recklessness, negligence or carelessness of the defending party you will need to be able to prove it in court. This is definitely something an experienced lawyer can help with.

2. Negligence is not the only thing that you need to prove in court. Breach of duty is another things that needs to be taken into consideration. Doctors as well as other institutions have a duty to maintain a patient’s health. You need to be able to show what their duty was and how they broke this duty by not obeying the rules of their conduct.

3. Causation. It has to be clearly proven how the actions of the defending party caused the death of the deceased. Again this is something an experienced lawyer can help with.

4. Damages. This elements might be the hardest to prove as it is often not easy to put a price on someone’s life, but the death of every person brings some sort of damages such as the pain and suffering of the deceased as well as of their family, the loss of income, the loss of inheritance, etc.