Wrongful Death Case Timeline

Answer:

In New York state, when people come in to see us after they’ve lost a loved one in a wrongful death, they’re still grieving, but nevertheless want to know how long it’s going to take to resolve their loved one’s case. Generally, we tell them that it depends on a number of factors. It depends on how the case happened and how much of an investigation has to be done.

We don’t have their loved one to talk to about how the accident happened, so it’s even more important than usual that we do an investigation to talk to all of the witnesses, to get all the photographs and take our own photographs, to get the video surveillance. We’re handling a very sad case for somebody right now involving a lot of surveillance video. There’s a lot of footage that has to be reviewed, and that takes some time.

The next thing you have to deal with is how a settlement is going to be divided up or apportioned in New York state. With wrongful death, the settlement goes to the wife and the family, or the loved ones that were dependent, and it doesn’t always mean an equal split. Sometimes we’re able to resolve cases in a matter of months, maybe four, six, eight months, but very often it takes longer to resolve those cases.

There is a shorter statute of limitations for wrongful death cases than there are for simple negligence cases; it’s two years, rather than three years. That shortens the total amount of time that it takes, but there’s still a number of factors in wrongful death cases which push them out and often make them take a little bit longer than a typical car accident case.