It can be difficult for a grieving spouse or parent to try and quantify the harms and losses they’ve suffered from a tragic accident. This is perfectly understandable and why it makes sense to retain a Nevada wrongful death attorney to do this work on your behalf. We fully understand that no amount of money will ever be able to fully compensate you for the loss of a loved one, but it is important to remember that the objective in a wrongful death action is the pursuit of damages to help you and your family going forward.
Compiling and calculating certain costs like funeral expenses and medical bills is fairly straight forward. We can quickly review receipts and invoices. However, when it comes to calculating your loved one’s future income, the task is more complicated.
To properly assess how much your loved one would have been earned in their career and been able to contribute financially requires an analysis of numerous factors, including:
The age of the decedent;
The overall health of the decedent at the time of the accident;
The estimated life expectancy of a comparable individual;
The estimated earning capacity for a worker in the decedent’s chosen profession
Making these assessments and calculations generally requires retaining experts and economists who are able to testify in court concerning your loved one’s future earning potential. An economist can also help with calculating the monetary harm to a family with the sudden loss of a loved one who assisted with childcare, home maintenance, education, transportation, cooking, and so forth.
It can also be difficult to establish pecuniary loss when the decedent was a child or someone who was retired and not actually generating an income. However, a wrongful death loss includes seeking damages for the emotional trauma associated with the sudden loss.
There is no set formula for the amount of monetary damages that can be awarded in a wrongful death civil claim. Nevada law simply mandates that the damages awarded in a wrongful death action must be fair and reasonable.