A wrongful death lawsuit is one of the worst types of claims you can make to the courts. You are asking for payment because there was a loss of life, and where the case itself can be harrowing, it is even worse if you receive nothing at the end of it. The money will not bring anybody back from death, but a payment both eases the suffering of those left behind and penalizes the company that put the employee in danger. However, as you know, there are times when even the best wrongful death lawsuit California lawyer cannot win. Here are some of the reasons why your wrongful death lawsuit may fail.
Proving a Failure to Act
The story of the death may be as convoluted and long as the Lord of the Rings books , which makes a case very difficult to get through for all involved. Yet, many wrongful death lawsuits come down to concrete proof.
If you want to win, you need to “Prove” that somebody else failed to act, or that somebody else’s actions directly caused the death of another person. You can have plenty of evidence of all the events but proving that somebody or a group of people are at fault is very difficult.
Being Unable to Prove Monetary Injuries
A wrongful death lawsuit in California may be lost simply because there are no monetary injuries related to the death. Just because your cousin lost her life in a factory after being run over by a truck, it doesn’t mean the employer has to payout. If the deceased employee has no close family or dependents, if you are the closest family member, then the wrongful death claim may be won, but nobody will be paid besides the lawyers.
Not Within the Statute of Limitations
In most cases, you need to file a case for wrongful death within a certain time limit. If it has been too long, then the courts will not hear your case. There are only a few instances where this may not apply. For example, coal miners in Wales were given compensation years later after we discovered that black lung was caused by mining coal. Still, in most cases, if you do not file a claim within a set limit of time, you cannot take the employer to court for a wrongful death lawsuit in California.
Defining Fault Can Be Too Difficult in your Wrongful Death Lawsuit in California
Let’s say that a large machine breaks and kills an employee. It may turn out that the employer was following all the maintenance instructions that were issued by the Chinese supplier that manufactured the machine. Then, to make things more confusing, it turns out that the translator who translated the instructions from Chinese to English got it wrong. It then also turns out that the machine may have been incorrectly installed by another company. This is a simple example of how difficult wrongful death cases can get. If you are worried you may lose your wrongful death case and are afraid to make the claim, then get in touch with Belal Hamideh Law and get some advice on what you should do next.