Bossier City’s fatal wrecks happen on I-20 and I-220, on US-71, and on the wide arterials, Airline Drive, Benton Road, and Barksdale Boulevard, and the badly hurt are taken to Willis Knighton Bossier on Hospital Drive or across the river to the Level I trauma center at Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport. The Bossier City Police Department at 620 Benton Road writes the report inside the city, the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office in Benton writes it out toward Haughton, Princeton, and Plain Dealing, and for a roadway death the report sometimes comes from Louisiana State Police instead. A Bossier Parish wrongful death suit can be filed in the 26th Judicial District Court, which sits at 204 Burt Boulevard in Benton rather than in Bossier City. Trey Morris Injury Lawyers’ Bossier City office is at 1815 Benton Road. We pull the crash report, settle which family members hold the claim, and send preservation requests for the surveillance footage from the businesses along Airline Drive and for the other vehicle and its event data. Those requests go out once the facts give us an honest basis for making them. Together, that video and data can show speed, the signal and who had the right of way, which is how a family proves who caused the death.
Results for Louisiana Clients
- $409 MillionWrongful Death
A tragic case where an impaired driver of a commercial vehicle ran a red light, then collided with our client, causing serious bodily injury to the mother and the loss of life of her daughter.
- $4.95 MillionWrongful Death
A hydraulic line exploded at a job site, taking the life of our client's loved one.
- $3.15 MillionWrongful Death
An 18-wheeler caused a fatal collision that took the life of our client's loved one.
- $2 MillionWrongful Death
A fatal collision caused by the at-fault driver took the life of our client's loved one.
- $1.6 MillionWrongful Death
An 18-wheeler made an unsafe lane change and caused a fatal collision; our client's loved one was killed.
- $1.5 MillionWrongful Death
A motorcycle collision took the life of our client's loved one.
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes; each case is decided on its own facts.
What Does a Bossier City Wrongful Death Lawyer Do for Your Family?
A wrongful death lawyer builds the factual record of how the death happened, identifies every party responsible, deals with the insurers, and takes the claim to court when negotiation does not produce a fair result.
Insurers assign adjusters and defense lawyers to fatal accident claims, and their job is to limit what the company pays. Your lawyer takes that contact directly, so you are not sitting at your own kitchen table negotiating against trained professionals in the same month you buried someone. The lawyer presents the documented losses, answers the defense theories, and pushes back when an early offer undervalues the claim.
Speaking with a lawyer does not commit you to a lawsuit. It produces an honest read on whether a claim exists, who may be responsible, and what the next steps are. Consultations for these matters are typically free. This week, put on one page the date of death, the agency that worked the scene, the report number if you have it, and the name of every adjuster who has called you. That page is what the first conversation runs on.
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Bossier City injury suits are filed in the 26th Judicial District Court. We file and try cases there from our Bossier City office.
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Cases resolved over $1 million
Verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more, won by the same trial team that handles Bossier City cases.
What Is a Wrongful Death Claim Under Louisiana Law?
A Louisiana wrongful death claim is a civil action that lets specific surviving family members claim compensation for the losses they personally sustain when someone else’s conduct kills a relative. Louisiana creates this action in La. C.C. art. 2315.2. The claim belongs to you and the other survivors, not to the person who died. The death usually traces to the same kind of conduct that supports any injury claim: a driver who ran a light on Benton Road, a property owner who ignored a hazard, a manufacturer who sold a defective product.
Wrongful Death vs. Survival Action: The Critical Louisiana Distinction
A fatal accident gives your family two separate legal claims, not one. Both are created in favor of the same statutorily designated beneficiaries: the survival action under La. C.C. art. 2315.1 and the wrongful death action under art. 2315.2. The survival action carries forward the damages the person who died could have claimed had they lived, so it looks backward at what your relative endured before dying. The wrongful death action looks forward at what you and the other surviving family members lose because of the death. Both come from the same incident, both can be filed in one petition, and treating them as one claim leaves money unclaimed, because each reaches damages the other cannot.
One family member can hold a claim under both actions at once. In the survival action, that person stands in the decedent’s shoes and claims what the decedent could have claimed. In the wrongful death action, the same person claims a personal loss the death caused that individual.
Survival Action Damages: The Decedent’s Own Pain and Suffering
The survival action compensates what your relative experienced between the injury and dying: physical pain, conscious mental anguish, and fear. If your relative was hurt badly on I-20 and lived for hours or days in the hospital before passing, those hours of suffering are claimed through the survival action rather than the wrongful death action. The strength of this claim turns on the evidence of conscious suffering. Medical records, witness accounts, and the interval between injury and death all matter, and a death that follows a long hospitalization presents a different survival claim than one that is instantaneous.
Medical bills incurred before death also belong to the survival action, not the wrongful death claim: the ambulance, the emergency department, surgery, intensive care, and treatment between the injury and death. Because your relative owed those debts, the right to claim them is carried forward through the survival action to the same beneficiaries the article designates.
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit in Louisiana?
La. C.C. art. 2315.2 sets a ranked order of family members and works down that order one tier at a time. The closest surviving relatives hold the claim, and once a tier is occupied, no tier below it can file.
The surviving spouse and the children of the person who died sit at the top and share the claim. This is the common pattern in fatal car, truck, and workplace cases, where a husband or wife and the decedent’s children bring the claim together in one petition.
Parents come next, and they hold the claim only when no spouse and no child survived. This is the reading that lets a mother and father sue over the death of an unmarried, childless son or daughter.
Siblings come third, and only when no spouse, no child, and no parent survives, which is a narrower opening than most families expect. Grandparents come last, only when no spouse, no child, no parent, and no sibling survives.
Within a single occupied tier, more than one person can share the claim. A surviving spouse and several children, or two surviving parents, stand together in the same tier and typically join in one petition. Reading the ranking correctly at the start tells you who the named plaintiffs will be, and it keeps an insurer from treating a surviving brother as the claimant while a spouse or a child is still living. Write out the family as it stood on the date of death, spouse and children first, then parents, siblings, and grandparents, living or not, and bring that page to the first meeting.
What Is the Statute of Limitations for a Wrongful Death Claim in Bossier City?
A wrongful death claim in Louisiana runs on a prescriptive period, which is the state’s term for the deadline to file suit. Once that period runs, the claim is extinguished, and a court will dismiss it no matter how strong the underlying facts are. Under La. C.C. art. 2315.2, as amended in 2025, the period is the longer of one year from the date of death or two years from the day the injury was sustained, which matters when someone survives an injury for days or weeks before dying. A medical malpractice wrongful death action prescribes one year from the date of death.
The survival action under La. C.C. art. 2315.1 exists separately from the wrongful death action, and its prescriptive period is the longer of one year from the death or two years from the injury. The right to assert your relative’s pre-death claim has its own clock, so do not assume that preserving one action preserves the other.
Which version of the rule applies can depend on when the death occurred, so confirm the exact period that applies to your situation against the current Louisiana Civil Code and with an attorney before you rely on any date.
The deadline is the legal floor, not the planning target. The insurer began its own investigation the week of the death, and the useful evidence often disappears long before the deadline arrives. A claim filed at the last minute on thin evidence is a weaker claim than one built deliberately over months.
Deadlines That May Differ for Government, Medical Malpractice, or Product Claims
Several categories of claims carry their own procedural deadlines and pre-suit requirements that can shorten the practical window. Claims against a government body, such as the parish, a municipality, or a state agency, carry their own rules, including a 90-day deadline to request service after suit is filed and a cap on some damages. That question comes up here more than most people expect, because so much of the road network through Bossier City is public. Medical malpractice deaths run through a separate statutory process that often requires submission to a medical review panel before a lawsuit can proceed, which changes how and when the filing happens. Claims involving a defective product can implicate additional rules tied to when the defect and the harm were discovered.
These overlays are reasons to confirm the controlling deadline early rather than to assume the default period applies.
What Damages Can Families Recover in a Louisiana Wrongful Death Case?
Each surviving beneficiary’s wrongful death claim is measured by that person’s own loss, so a surviving spouse and a minor child present distinct claims within the same petition, and two people in the same family can claim different amounts. A teenage child who depended on a parent’s income and daily guidance has a claim measured by that dependence. La. C.C. art. 2315.2 allows the damages each beneficiary suffered, and the losses families ask about most are lost financial support, lost love and companionship, mental anguish, and funeral expenses.
Loss of Financial Support and Future Earnings
When the person who died provided income to the household, the survivors can claim the support they lost. That includes wages, benefits, and the value of services the decedent performed for the family. An economist usually calculates the figure by projecting what the person would have earned over a normal working life, using age, wages, work-life expectancy, and benefits, then reducing it to present value. This category matters most when your relative was a primary earner or contributed substantial in-kind support.
Loss of Love, Companionship, Guidance, and Affection
A spouse loses a partner. A child loses a parent’s guidance. A parent loses a son or daughter. These losses are real even though no invoice measures them. The closeness of the relationship, the role your relative played day to day, and the age of the survivors all affect the value, and testimony is what brings the relationship to life. A young child losing a parent and an adult child who visited twice a year hold different claims within this same category.
Grief, Anguish, and Mental Suffering
Mental anguish is distinct from the loss of the relationship. It reflects the survivor’s own emotional injury rather than the value of the bond that was lost. Proof here often comes from the survivors themselves, from other family members, and sometimes from treating mental health providers. The stronger the documentation of how the death changed a survivor’s life, the clearer this part of the claim becomes.
Funeral and Burial Expenses
The costs of the funeral, the burial or cremation, and the related services are concrete numbers, and they belong in the damages calculation alongside the larger categories.
How Much Is a Bossier City Wrongful Death Case Worth?
There is no fixed number for a wrongful death case. Value depends on who died, what your family lost, who is responsible, and how much insurance or how many assets are available to pay a judgment. Two cases with similar facts can settle for very different amounts because the people left behind had different relationships, different financial dependence, and different evidence. Online calculators promise a quick estimate, but they cannot account for those variables, so honest case valuation starts with the facts of the loss, not a formula.
Several concrete factors move the value of a case up or down: the strength of the liability evidence, your relative’s age and earning history, the number of dependents who relied on that income and support, and the severity of the conduct involved. A clearly documented cause of death with strong proof of negligence supports a higher figure than a disputed accident nobody can reconstruct.
Insurance Limits, Commercial Defendants, and Collectability
A case is only worth what someone can actually pay. A claim against an individual driver carrying a minimum auto policy may be capped by that policy limit, no matter how much the loss is truly worth. A trucking company running the I-20 corridor, a manufacturer, or a business with commercial coverage and corporate assets can satisfy a far larger judgment than a private individual. Find the declarations page for every auto policy in the household, including uninsured motorist coverage, and set those pages aside with the file.
Settlement Value vs. Trial Value
Settlement value and trial value are not the same number. Trial value is what a jury in Benton might award if the case is proven in full. Settlement value discounts that figure for the risk of losing, the cost and delay of litigation, and the uncertainty of how a particular jury will react. A defendant facing strong evidence and clear damages will often pay more to settle than one who sees real defenses. Most cases resolve before a verdict, and the credible ability to try one is what shapes the number a defendant will offer to avoid it.
How Do Bossier City Wrongful Death Lawyers Prove Liability?
The difference between a death case and any other injury claim is that the person who experienced the harm cannot testify. The proof has to be assembled from records, physical evidence, and witnesses who can reconstruct what happened.
Proving Duty, Breach, Causation, and Damages
A liability case is built from four working parts. The defendant owed your relative a duty of reasonable care, the defendant breached that duty, the breach caused the death, and the survivors sustained real damages because of it. Duty asks what care the situation required, such as a motorist’s duty to drive safely on Barksdale Boulevard or a hospital’s duty to meet the accepted standard of care. A breach is the failure to meet that expectation: running a red light on Benton Road, ignoring a known hazard, sending a fatigued driver onto the interstate. The causal link between the breach and the death is often the most contested part of the case.
Evidence Used in Fatal Accident Investigations
In a fatal vehicle crash, the evidence includes the law enforcement crash report, photographs of the scene taken before a road crew changes it, skid marks, vehicle damage patterns, and any traffic or surveillance video. Modern vehicles store data in event recorders that capture speed, braking, and throttle inputs in the seconds before impact. Commercial trucks add electronic logging devices, maintenance files, and driver records. Witnesses have to be found while they still remember the order things happened in.
Different fatal cases pull different proof. A workplace death turns on safety records, equipment inspection logs, and regulatory compliance. A premises death turns on maintenance history and prior complaints. A medical case turns on the chart, the imaging, and the standard of care. Common causes of wrongful death, such as distracted or impaired driving, unsafe worksites, defective products, and inadequate security, each leave a distinct evidentiary trail that the investigation has to follow.
Expert Witnesses in Wrongful Death Cases
Most fatal accident cases require expert testimony because the questions go past common knowledge. An accident reconstructionist translates physical evidence into speed, angle, and timing conclusions. A biomechanical expert connects the forces of the collision to the fatal injuries. A medical expert explains cause of death and, in malpractice cases, whether the care fell below the accepted standard.
Economic experts also matter. A forensic economist calculates the value of lost future earnings and household services, and a vocational expert establishes what your relative would have earned over a working lifetime. The attorneys handling a fatal accident case select the experts it requires and retain those with working relationships and credible credentials in the relevant field.
Multiple Liable Parties and Insurance Coverage
Many fatal accidents on I-20, I-220, or Airline Drive involve more than one responsible party, and identifying all of them widens the pool of available coverage. A commercial vehicle death can implicate the driver, the trucking company that put that driver on the road, a maintenance contractor, and a cargo loader. A defective product can pull in the manufacturer, the distributor, and the retailer. A property owner, or a government entity that controlled the road or premises, can also share responsibility.
Each defendant may carry separate insurance, and the difference between one policy and several can determine whether a judgment is collectable. Insurers do not volunteer the full extent of available coverage, so part of proving a viable claim is locating every policy that applies and every party whose conduct contributed to the death. The obvious defendant is where this work starts, not where it ends.
Comparative Fault in Louisiana Wrongful Death Cases
The defense will almost always argue that your relative shared some blame, whether by speeding, ignoring a warning, or some other conduct the defense will magnify, because Louisiana law reduces a family’s damages by the percentage of fault assigned to the person who died. Louisiana uses a modified comparative fault system under La. C.C. art. 2323. For causes of action arising on or after January 1, 2026, a plaintiff who is 51 percent or more at fault collects nothing. At 50 percent or less, the damages are reduced by the assigned fault percentage.
The reconstruction, the data, and the witness accounts that establish the defendant’s fault are the same evidence that holds the line on your relative’s share.
What Types of Fatal Accident Cases Do Bossier City Wrongful Death Lawyers Handle?
The type of event that caused the death shapes who the defendant is, what evidence exists, which insurers respond, and how complicated the investigation gets. These categories cover the bulk of fatal accident claims that arise in and around Bossier City.
Fatal Car and Truck Accidents on I-20, I-220, and US-71
Fatal vehicle crashes are the most common source of wrongful death claims in northwest Louisiana. Bossier City sits on the I-20 corridor, with I-220 looping the north side and US-71 running through the parish, and high-speed traffic on those routes produces severe collisions. Passenger vehicle wrecks usually involve one or two drivers and their auto insurers. Commercial truck crashes are a different animal: the trucking company, its insurer, the driver, a freight broker, and a maintenance contractor can all share responsibility, and federal motor carrier rules govern driver hours, vehicle inspections, and recordkeeping. A truck’s electronic control module and driver logs can be overwritten or discarded within weeks, and an attorney who moves to preserve them protects the evidence that often decides liability.
Motorcycle, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Deaths
Motorcyclists, pedestrians, and bicyclists have almost no protection in a collision, so crashes involving them frequently turn fatal, whether on a wide arterial like Airline Drive or a neighborhood street in Shady Grove. The driver’s insurer often argues the rider or pedestrian was partly to blame, claiming the motorcyclist was speeding or the pedestrian crossed against the signal. Physical evidence, scene measurements, vehicle data, and often surveillance or traffic camera footage separate what actually happened from the defense narrative.
Workplace and Industrial Fatality Claims
Northwest Louisiana has manufacturing, construction, oilfield, and chemical processing operations. A death at those sites may involve the employer, but it may also involve equipment manufacturers, contractors, subcontractors, and property owners who controlled the site. The interaction between a workers’ compensation death claim and a separate wrongful death lawsuit against a third party is a recurring issue in these cases, and the answer depends on who caused the death and their relationship to your relative.
Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death Cases
When a death follows a medical error, the claim runs through Louisiana’s specialized medical malpractice framework, which differs from an ordinary negligence case. These claims require medical expert testimony to establish the applicable standard of care and to show that a provider’s breach of that standard caused the death. Hospital records, imaging, medication orders, and treatment timelines become the core evidence.
Nursing Home Neglect and Elder Abuse Fatalities
Deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities often trace to neglect: untreated bedsores, dehydration, malnutrition, medication errors, unaddressed infections, or falls that go unreported. Proving these cases means reconstructing the resident’s care from facility records, staffing logs, care plans, and incident reports. Corporate ownership structures can place responsibility beyond the individual facility, with management companies and parent entities also bearing liability.
What Should Families Do After a Fatal Accident in Bossier City?
The hours and days after a fatal accident are for grief, not paperwork. Still, a few practical steps in the first weeks protect your ability to pursue a claim later. None of them requires hiring anyone, and each exists because something gets lost when no one acts on it early.
Request the Police, Crash, or Incident Report
The official report is the spine of a fatal accident file. A crash report records the location, the vehicles, the parties, the weather, the time of day, and the investigating officer’s observations. For a workplace or premises death, an incident report or an OSHA filing serves a similar role.
A family member or the personal representative can request the report once it is finalized. Get the report number from the responding agency, and note the name and badge number of the investigating officer. Reports sometimes contain errors in the diagram, the direction of travel, or the assignment of fault. Having the document in hand early lets those errors be identified while witnesses and physical evidence still exist to correct them.
Preserve Photos, Videos, Vehicles, and Physical Evidence
Physical evidence has a short shelf life. Skid marks fade. Roadside debris gets swept. Surveillance footage from a business along Airline Drive is overwritten on a routine cycle, often within days or weeks, and witness memories blur within weeks. The vehicles involved in a crash carry data and damage patterns that an investigation depends on, and a totaled vehicle can be sold for salvage or crushed before anyone examines it.
Photograph everything you can reach safely: the scene, the vehicles, the resting positions, the road surface, and any visible defects. Save phone videos, dashcam files, and doorbell or security footage from the neighbors. Tell the towing company or storage yard holding the vehicle, in writing, not to release, repair, sell, or destroy it. A written request to preserve evidence, sent to whoever holds it, creates a record that the evidence existed and was demanded.
Avoid Giving Recorded Statements to Insurance Adjusters
An insurance adjuster will often call within days of a fatal accident. A recorded statement is taken so it can be used later, and a grieving family member answering open-ended questions can give answers that get repurposed against the claim.
You have no legal obligation to give a recorded statement to the other party’s insurer. Anything said about how the accident happened, about your relative’s actions, or about fault can affect the value of a Louisiana wrongful death claim.
Track Funeral Costs, Medical Bills, and Income Loss
Your documentation drives the economic side of the claim. Start one folder now for every funeral and burial invoice, every receipt, and every statement of payment, before the paperwork scatters across the house. Save the medical bills for any treatment your relative received before death, and call the medical records line at whichever hospital treated your relative to ask for the complete itemized bill and the full chart, not the discharge summary.
Income loss is harder to reconstruct after the fact, so capture it while the records are still reachable. Gather recent pay stubs, tax returns, W-2 or 1099 forms, and any documentation of benefits, bonuses, or self-employment earnings. Those records establish the financial support your family lost. The fuller the documentation, the less you depend on estimates an insurer can dispute.
Contact a Wrongful Death Lawyer Before Signing Releases
The single most consequential document you can sign early is a release. Insurers sometimes offer a quick payment in the weeks after a death, and that offer almost always comes attached to a release that ends the claim for good. Signing it closes the door on every future claim against that party, even if the full extent of the loss is not yet known and even if other liable parties exist.
Sign no release until someone has measured the offer against the actual value of the claim: who the liable parties are, what the claim is worth, and whether the offer on the table reflects it. The Bossier City Police Department records division and the Bossier Parish Clerk of Court in Benton can help you gather the underlying documents while that review is underway.
Where Are Wrongful Death Cases Filed in Bossier City and Bossier Parish?
A wrongful death lawsuit is not filed just anywhere. It belongs in a specific trial court, and which court that is depends on where the death-causing conduct happened and where the parties are located. A suit over a fatal accident on a city street in Golden Meadows, on a parish road, or on one of the interstates running through Bossier Parish can be filed in the 26th Judicial District Court. The petition is filed with the parish clerk of court, and the case is then assigned to a judge who manages it through discovery, motions, and trial. Sorting out the correct court is something a lawyer does before a suit is filed, not something to discover after the fact.
Why Venue and Jurisdiction Matter in Wrongful Death Cases
Venue is the question of which court is the proper place for a lawsuit. Jurisdiction is the court’s authority to decide the case and to bind the parties. The two are separate questions, and both have to be right. Filing in the wrong court can lead to a transfer, a delay, or a dismissal that costs time your family may not have.
Venue choices also have practical consequences. The parish where a case is tried shapes the jury pool, the local procedures, and the pace of the docket. A defendant may try to move a case to a venue it prefers, and your attorney has to be ready to answer that.
Claims Involving Nearby Shreveport, I-20, I-220, and Northwest Louisiana
Bossier City sits directly across the Red River from Shreveport in Caddo Parish, and the two cities share heavy interstate traffic, so a fatal crash on I-20, I-220, or US-71 can involve drivers, employers, and vehicles connected to more than one parish. A crash that starts on one side of the river and ends on the other, or a commercial vehicle based outside Northwest Louisiana, can create a real choice of forum, and the proper court is not always obvious. Identifying the correct court early keeps the case on track and avoids procedural disputes that benefit no one but the defense. Write down where the wreck happened as precisely as you can, by interstate mile marker or nearest cross street, and give that to your lawyer at the first meeting.
How Long Does a Wrongful Death Case Take in Bossier Parish?
Most Bossier Parish wrongful death cases resolve in one to three years, though the range is wide. A clear-liability case with adequate insurance can settle in under a year. A disputed case that goes to trial can run three years or longer. The timeline depends on how contested liability is, how many parties are involved, and whether the case settles or proceeds to a verdict.
Pre-Litigation Investigation and Demand Phase (3-6 Months)
The first phase happens before any lawsuit is filed. Counsel gathers the crash or incident report, the medical records, the witness statements, and any physical evidence, then identifies the parties who may be responsible. This phase commonly runs three to six months. Once liability is documented and the losses are quantified, counsel sends a demand to the responsible party’s insurer.
Discovery, Depositions, and Expert Retention
If the demand does not produce a fair offer, counsel files suit and the case enters discovery. In a fatal accident case, depositions often cover the involved drivers or operators, eyewitnesses, investigating officers, and corporate representatives when a company is a defendant. This is also when the experts are retained, and they produce reports and may be deposed. Discovery is usually the longest phase of a wrongful death case, often running a year or more in a heavily disputed matter.
Mediation and Settlement Negotiation Timeline
Many wrongful death cases settle after discovery and before trial, and mediation is a common step here. Mediation can be scheduled within a few months of finishing the key depositions. When several family members hold claims, the negotiation also has to account for how a settlement will be allocated among them. Settlement remains possible at almost any point, including on the courthouse steps in Benton before trial begins.
Trial: When It Happens and What to Expect
When the parties cannot agree, the case is set for trial. In a wrongful death matter, that point often arrives two to three years after the death, depending on the court’s docket and the complexity of the evidence. A trial puts the question of fault and damages to a judge or a Bossier Parish jury, who hear the witnesses, review the exhibits, and reach a verdict.
Even after a verdict, an appeal can extend the timeline further. Ask any lawyer you meet with to walk you through the phases in writing and how long each one usually takes in the 26th Judicial District Court.
Your Bossier City Trial Team
The lawyers who work your file. Every Bossier City case is handled by the firm's own trial attorneys.
How Do Contingency Fees Work for Bossier City Wrongful Death Lawyers?
A contingency fee means the lawyer’s payment comes out of the settlement or verdict, not out of your pocket up front. The fee is a percentage of the amount the lawyer collects for you, earned only if the case produces compensation through a settlement or a judgment. If the claim produces no compensation for your family, you owe no attorney fee for the time the lawyer spent on it. The lawyer carries that financial risk in exchange for a share of the result, so you do not need cash on hand to investigate a fatal accident, retain experts, or take a corporate defendant and its insurer to court.
Contingency Fee Model: No Fee Unless We Win
Trey Morris Injury Lawyers works wrongful death cases on a contingency basis and sets out the terms in a written agreement before any work begins. The agreement states the contingency percentage and whether it changes if the case is filed or goes to trial. Some agreements use a single fixed percentage. Others use a tiered structure, where a defined event moves the case to a higher percentage, because a matter that has to be filed and litigated takes more work than one that settles before suit.
What Case Costs Are Separate From Attorney Fees
Case costs are the out-of-pocket expenses the case requires, and they are separate from the fee. In a wrongful death case those costs can be substantial. They often include accident reconstruction experts, medical record retrieval, autopsy and pathology review, economists who calculate lost financial support, court filing fees, deposition transcripts, and service of process. The firm advances the case costs and deducts them from the proceeds at the end, and the agreement states whether those costs come out of the gross or the net amount. Agreements also differ on what happens to advanced costs if the case does not produce any compensation.
How Fee Agreements Work When Multiple Family Members File
When several family members participate, each person who retains the firm signs a fee agreement, and the contingency percentage applies to the amount collected on behalf of the represented claimants. The net proceeds are then allocated among them. Some allocations are agreed among the family. Others can require additional steps, particularly where a minor child is a beneficiary.
To see the kind of results that come out of this work, view our case results. When you are ready to discuss your own situation, you can talk to a lawyer. Read the results first, then bring the file you have been building.