If a loved one died in an accident or because of someone else’s negligence, our lawyers can help you and your family recover compensation for your loss.  While monetary damages can never bring your loved one back or replace them, these damages can be vital to helping you and your loved ones move forward with your lives.

Damages for a loved one’s death can include the cost of medical treatment they faced at the end of life, reasonable funeral and burial costs, as well as the ongoing financial harm that your family faces from the death.  Never accept any money from the responsible parties or their insurance companies until you talk to our lawyers about your case.

For a free review of your potential case, call our wrongful death lawyers immediately at The Carrion Law Firm at (718) 841-0083.

Common Types of Wrongful Death Claims in Bayside, Queens

Most of Bayside consists of neighborhoods and business districts without any obvious dangers that could cause accidents.  Instead, it is often surprising, everyday causes of death that lead to wrongful death claims for Bayside families, including the following:

Traffic Accidents

Traffic accidents are one of the most common ways for people across all groups and ages to face injury and death.  If a loved one was killed while driving, hit as a pedestrian, or hit by a drunk driver, their death would likely be deemed a wrongful death almost by definition.  In these cases, a lawsuit against the at-fault driver is typically available, as our no-fault auto insurance rules do not block lawsuits for deaths or other serious injuries.  Our wrongful death lawyers can help with truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, bike accidents, scooter accidents, and all other kinds of auto accidents as well.

Highways like 295, 495, and the Cross Island Parkway make deadly auto accidents more likely in Bayside.

Defective Product, Medication, and Auto Part Injuries

When we think of “defective products,” we often think of toys or gadgets that might break and cause slight injury.  However, this area of personal injury cases is much broader and can include things like defective safety features on power tools and household appliances, defective smoke alarms and fire doors, and electronics that could spark and burn a house down.

Many people also die because of medication and pharmaceuticals that had serious defects or from auto parts that failed while driving.  For example, exploding gas tanks, defective seat belts, defective steering systems, and airbags that fail to deploy properly could be linked to death.

Deadly Work Injuries

Many people die while performing their jobs.  This makes it more complicated to seek compensation, as Workers’ Compensation rules often block lawsuits against the employer.  However, many families can still sue other third-party defendants for their loved one’s death.  This allows lawsuits against customers, producers of defective work gear, drivers who crashed into your loved one while they were working, and other potentially liable parties.

Falls

Falls from high heights can often cause serious injury and death.  Our lawyers can help seek justice if a loved one fell because of a defective railing, broken stairs, collapsing balcony, or other cause for a serious fall.

However, falls can also cause surprisingly serious head injuries even without heights involved.  If your loved one fell into a coma because of a serious head injury sustained in a slip and fall accident or other seemingly “mundane” fall-down accident, our lawyers can help you seek justice.  If that eventually leads to their death, our lawyers can also help with the wrongful death lawsuit.

Negligent Medical Care

One surprisingly common reason that people die is because the medical care they were given was ineffective, negligent, or frankly dangerous.  Doctors need to follow the “standard of care” in treating patients, which means taking the steps that other doctors of “ordinary prudence” in the same situation would have taken.  This means running the proper tests, diagnosing conditions, sending patients to specialists when you do not know what to do, and performing surgery and other procedures properly.

Mistakes in diagnosis, medication, anesthesia, surgery, and cancer treatment can all lead to death.  Additionally, negligent treatment administered after a serious injury could also be the cause of death.  This could potentially allow a wrongful death suit against the party that caused the initial accident, given that the medical care would have never been needed if they had not caused the accident in the first place.

Damages Available to Families of Accident Victims in Bayside, Queens

New York law allows only monetary damages for the death of a loved one in a wrongful death lawsuit, but a related suit filed alongside these claims can often pay you additional pain and suffering damages for the victim’s pain and suffering.

If a person is injured, they can usually sue for their medical bills and lost wages, along with pain and suffering and other “non-economic” damages.  If they die, the right to file that lawsuit passes to their estate, and that “survival action” can still include damages for the victim’s pain and suffering.  If they spent a long time lingering before death and suffered immensely, these damages can be incredibly high.  Medical bills and lost wages in these claims pay for the damages between the injury and death.

The family also suffers damages they can seek in a wrongful death lawsuit.  These damages pay for their ongoing needs, such as the lost wages the family faces going forward without their loved one and the burial and funeral costs.  These damages and other “economic” damages can be claimed, but current legislation does not allow for “pain and suffering” or non-economic damages for the family.  However, proposals to change this have been repeatedly made in recent years.

“Punitive damages” can also be issued in cases where the at-fault party’s actions were intentional or reckless – i.e., cases where very serious missteps caused their death.

Call Our Wrongful Death Lawyers in Bayside, Queens Today

Contact The Carrion Law Firm at (718) 841-0083 for a free case evaluation with our wrongful death attorneys.