Wrongful Death FAQ

Who is legally permitted to file a wrongful death claim?

How long will a wrongful death claim take?

What is the physician-patient privilege?

How is wrongful death different from murder?

Who is legally permitted to file a wrongful death claim?

Spouses, children and immediate family members may bring wrongful death lawsuits against potentially negligent parties.

How long will a wrongful death claim take?

A lot of investigation and research must go into preparing a wrongful death case. Filing must be done before the Connecticut statute of limitations runs out, so don’t delay too long in consulting a wrongful death attorney. But a settlement or judgment could take months or even years to achieve.

The sooner you consult an attorney and get things started, the sooner a settlement can potentially be arrived at.

A personal injury lawyer will listen to your concerns, and if you’d like to have us work for you, we’ll get started immediately on gathering information.

As we investigate and find more answers, we’ll be able to give you a more likely timeframe estimate. There are many unknowns in any lawsuit, so no guarantees can be given of a settlement date or a trial date.

What is physician-patient privilege?

Physician-patient privilege is the confidentiality of what is communicated between patient and doctor. It’s similar to the attorney-client privilege. It’s designed to protect a person’s medical information and records.

When a person dies while under the care of a given physician, the medical records in the care of that doctor may be sealed because of the existing physician-patient privilege. That doctor may therefore have the right to refuse to divulge information contained in those records without the patient’s consent.

Sometimes the privilege might have been waived by the patient before death. Or it might not be complete or absolute.

A wrongful death lawyer will be able to discover whether those records are sealed or not, and may be able to gain access to them for the purpose of filing a wrongful death claim.

How is wrongful death different from murder?

They may indeed feel the same, but legally speaking, a wrongful death is a civil case whereas murder is criminal. A criminal charge of murder is not brought by the victim’s family, but by a State or Federal district, on behalf of the residents of that state or district.

The defendant is held to be innocent until judged guilty by the jury, and the proof must go “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Wrongful death is a civil action brought by the deceased person’s surviving family. The standard of proof is less strict than in a criminal case, needing only to be “a preponderance of the evidence”. This means that a jury need only decide that the defendant was probably guilty, and then it can make monetary awards to the claimant.