Most folks (thankfully) never have to think about suing someone or some entity because they have been harmed. Similarly, most folks haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about how much a personal injury is worth. How much should this defendant pay this plaintiff because she had seven months of pain following an auto collision? Not a question we ask ourselves every day.
Similarly, death happens all the time. When it does, the loss is often defined as being “priceless” or some other concept that puts the loss above actually quantifying it. Sometimes, however, the death is the result of negligence – someone or some entity who had a responsibility to act in a certain way, failed to do so, and caused someone to die.
In those circumstances, the family of the deceased person may think about hiring an attorney and filing a lawsuit. There are lots of reasons for doing so. Perhaps the deceased made the money for the household, and that needs to be replaced. Or perhaps the family is hopeful that a civil lawsuit will result in some accountability, some deterrent to the wrongdoer to make sure this same mistake doesn’t happen again and someone else dies.
Other times the family is grief-stricken, and sometimes angry. Their family member is gone and shouldn’t be. Dad is not going to be there anymore when I want to call and talk. Wife will never take walks with me and the dogs in the woods like we used to. We’ll never grow old together. It’s not fair.
While we can’t breathe life back into the person who is gone, the only thing we can do is compensate the family for their loss with money.
In Washington, just like other states, there are laws on what you can recover (loss of relationship, economic losses, etc.), and who can recover for the loss of their relationship with the decedent.
The “who” in Washington is, unfortunately, still incredibly unfair, which is a little shocking considering how we tend to think of ourselves as fairly progressive.
In Washington there is a bright line rule: if the decedent is a minor (17 years, 364 days old), the minor’s parents can recover for the relationship they each lost. However, if the same person dies the next day (age 18 years and 0 days), the parents have no such claims. Absent really unusual circumstances, that 18 year old’s life is probably worth whatever the medical bills were related to the wrongful conduct leading to death, and funeral expenses.
Of course, this is tragic because the grieving parents now are faced with the added insult that the state places little value on their child’s life. What in some ways is more tragic, in my opinion, is that the wrongdoer faces no consequences for their actions. There is no accountability in the civil context for taking the life of an unmarried adult with no kids him or herself. Without any accountability, our society is less safe.
It is similar to playing baseball in the backyard and hitting the ball through the neighbor’s window. Of course, we have less broken windows in our community because when you break one, you are responsible for fixing it. This acts as a deterrent to backyard baseball players. But if you were not held accountable for the broken window, there is no reason not to continue to play just as you had before, windows be damned.
The Washington State Association for Justice, an organization of plaintiff trial lawyers, for years has been attempting to revise this rule to allow jurors to make the decision as to how much a loss is worth, regardless of whether the decedent is 17 years old or 18. In our office, we probably get at least 10 calls a year describing a situation where an adult child dies as a result of alleged medical negligence, but because the recoverable damages are so low, it is impossible to take their case. I hope this will change soon.
