Monetary compensation may not be the first thing on your mind when you lose a loved one – but in the weeks and months that follow a tragic and untimely death, the medical and funeral expenses associated with laying a family member to rest before their time, as well as those surviving family members will continue to experience as a result of losing their loved one’s personal and financial support, can begin to add up. If you have lost a member of your family due to someone else’s wrongdoing, you may be eligible to pursue wrongful death compensation to help cover those damages. How this compensation is calculated can depend on a variety of factors, and many families find navigating the legal requirements of a wrongful death case overwhelmingly difficult as they struggle to adapt to their grief. Speaking with a Missouri wrongful death lawyer may help you to find clarity. Reach out to the experienced and compassionate wrongful death team at Steelman Gaunt Crowley today by calling our Rolla, Missouri office at (573) 341-8336 to book a free consultation.
What Is “Compensation” in a Wrongful Death Case?
According to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), civil torts law provides a legal mechanism whereby a person who has suffered some form of loss or injury as the result of someone else’s wrongdoing can seek remedy through the court system, even when the alleged wrongdoing does not give rise to charges that might be effectively prosecuted by the state in a criminal case. Most lawsuits filed by individuals over this type of tort, or wrongdoing, fall into the legal practice area known as personal injury, and are filed by the party claiming to have been injured directly. While plaintiffs can request, and courts can award, a number of different legal remedies, financial awards of damages, intended to compensate plaintiffs for the losses or other harms they have suffered, are by far the most common.
Compensation for Wrongful Death vs. Personal Injury
In some unfortunate situations, an individual who might otherwise have had a personal injury claim to pursue in court actually dies as a result of the incident or situation for which they might have filed a legal action if they had survived. When one person dies under circumstances that would have given that person a right to legal action had the circumstances not resulted in his or her death, MO Rev. Stat. § 537.080 provides that the deceased person’s surviving family members may file an action in court to recover damages from the party against whom the deceased person would have had a claim, had he or she survived. The legal action filed by family members when the person harmed does not survive to file a personal injury lawsuit is known as a wrongful death claim, and the damages awarded to family members as compensation in a successful action for wrongful death are generally calculated based on the estimated losses the surviving members of the deceased person’s family are expected to incur as a result of their loved one’s untimely, “wrongful” death.
Types of Compensation in Wrongful Death Cases
Damages in wrongful death cases are awarded in three main categories. These categories are:
- Economic damages
- Non-economic damages
- Punitive damages
Understanding these categories can make it easier to also understand how the concept of damage “caps” functions in wrongful death lawsuits.
Wrongful Death Economic Damages
Economic damages in Missouri wrongful death cases can in many cases themselves be subdivided into two distinct categories:
- Expenses related to the deceased person’s funeral expenses and end-of-life care
- Loss of financial contributions the deceased individual would likely have provided, had they survived
The first category is generally easier to estimate with precision, as the costs of the deceased person’s funeral and any expenses associated with medical care or treatments undertaken in order to save the individual’s life or ease his or her suffering are directly knowable and itemizable certainties. Damages resulting from loss of the individual’s expected future income or other contributions can be more difficult to calculate, but MO Rev. Stat. § 537.090 specifies a “rebuttable presumption” that estimates for loss of income should be based on a calculation of 110% of average Missouri wages as elaborated under MO Rev. Stat. § 287.250. What this rebuttable presumption means for plaintiffs in Missouri wrongful death cases is that, if the expected losses are significantly greater than 110% of the statewide average due to the deceased person’s income, the plaintiffs may need to “rebut” the presumption by presenting evidence in support of a different estimated total.
Wrongful Death Non-Economic Damages
The same Missouri statute that allows a deceased person’s surviving family members to pursue compensation for their financial losses resulting from their loved one’s death also provides a pathway to claiming compensatory payment for losses that are not strictly monetary in their nature, even if the “damages” awarded as compensation (in a successful wrongful death suit) are not. The potential covered under MO Rev. Stat. § 537.090 is relatively broad, encompassing compensation for the “reasonable value” of the deceased individual’s companionship, “consortium” (usually applied to spouses), guidance (more commonly applied to the deceased person’s children, especially those who are minors at the time of the parent’s death), and a variety of other factors that – while they might theoretically influence earning potential or fiscal habits and therefore financial outcomes – are not inherently economic in nature. Missouri law does, however, explicitly preclude consideration of damages for grief or bereavement, in and of themselves, in determining the total compensation to which plaintiffs in a wrongful death case may be entitled.
Punitive Damages in Wrongful Death Cases
Occasionally a judge or jury considers a civil defendant’s tort to be so far “beyond the pale” that the “trier of fact” in the case (the judge or jury, depending on how the case is being tried) may order payments that are not, strictly speaking, “compensation” at all: They are designed to punish the defendant, usually with a view toward discouraging the conduct that led to the legal action. These payments are called punitive damages, emphasizing their role in penalizing behaviors (often but not always some form of negligence) rather than compensating for a plaintiff’s quantifiable losses. MO Rev. Stat. § 537.265 limits punitive damages in civil actions to the greater of $500,000 or five times the total net compensation awarded for damages, but they are also not particularly common in wrongful death cases. An experienced Missouri wrongful death lawyer with Steelman Gaunt Crowley may be able to explain more in a personalized conversation with your family.
What Are the Limits on Wrongful Death Compensation in Missouri?
The Missouri legislature has made some attempts to limit the total awards of compensatory damages in certain types of cases, most notably those relating to medical malpractice. Economic damages are generally not limited in malpractice cases, but MO Rev. Stat. § 538.210 limits recovery of non-economic damages arising from a variety of healthcare scenarios to $400,000 for most cases or an upper limit of $700,000 for “catastrophic injuries” and wrongful death.
Both personal injury and wrongful death medical malpractice cases have seen legal challenges to the limitations on damages set out under § 538.210. However, while both causes of action stem from the same category of alleged tortfeasance (medical malpractice), Missouri case law has treated the cap differently depending on whether the limit is applied to personal injury vs. wrongful death compensation. The key difference lies in whether the “cause of action” – the legally recognized right to sue for recovery of damages – is statutory vs. based in common law. Two 2012 cases before the Supreme Court of Missouri draw the distinction.
Personal Injury Common Law Cause of Action
In Watts v. Cox, the jury awarded, at the close of deliberations in the original trial, non-economic damages far exceeding the limit prescribed under the then-current MO Rev. Stat. § 538.210 (2005). The trial judge overseeing the case reduced the damages to bring them in line with the Missouri statute (the 2005 text remained in effect until August 2015). Watts raised a constitutional challenge to the judge’s reduction of damages on the basis that it unconstitutionally deprived her of the right to trial by jury, and the Supreme Court agreed that determining the appropriate amount of damages in a personal injury case was part of a jury’s essential function. On that reading, altering the jury’s judgment with respect to damages awarded would be undermining the jury’s function and thus depriving the plaintiff of their rights as protected under the Bill of Rights within the Missouri Constitution.
Wrongful Death Statutory Cause of Action
A few months before issuing its decision in Watts v. Cox, the state Supreme Court ruled on another case in which the constitutionality of Missouri’s limitation on damages awarded in cases arising from (or alleging) medical malpractice was similarly challenged. However, in Sanders v. Ahmed, the trial judge’s reduction of damages as awarded by the jury was held not to violate the plaintiff’s constitutional right to trial by jury, in part because of the same phrase in Article 1, Section 22(a) of the Missouri Constitution protecting Missourians’ rights “as heretofore enjoyed” that the Watts court found not to have included a limitation on a jury’s power to determine damages; the court in Sanders found that no common-law right to wrongful death compensation existed in Missouri in 1820. In addition, however, the court’s decision in Sanders v. Ahmed specified that “if [the legislature] creates the cause of action,” then it also has the authority to define the remedies available at law, further cementing existing precedent regarding the handling of cases based on statutorily created vs. common law causes of action.
Beyond recognizing the distinction that Missouri courts draw between the rights and remedies available in cases predicated on common law causes of action and those which are purely statutory, it is important to note that the Missouri legislature has made revisions to the statute whose constitutionality was challenged in both of the above cases. In 2015 an amendment introduced MO Rev. Stat. § 1.010, clarifying the relationship between English common law and Missouri’s legal framework. This addition, retained in the 2020 revision, explicitly excludes “rendering or failure to render” medical treatment or other health care from the state’s general rule of taking English common law as a foundation for its jurisprudence, with implications for not only wrongful death compensation but other actions arising out of medical situations.
Speak With a Compassionate Missouri Wrongful Death Lawyer To Ensure You Understand All Of Your Legal Options
Losing a loved one under any circumstances is always hard. Experiencing the untimely death of someone whose company you hoped to rely on for years to come due to someone else’s needless wrongdoing can be deeply traumatizing. While money will never make up for your grief, it can help to cover the practical costs incurred due to the loss of a family member’s support. Understanding how wrongful death compensation is calculated in Missouri can be difficult, especially as you struggle with your grief. A member of the compassionate and experienced wrongful death team at Steelman Gaunt Crowley may be able to offer guidance based on our many years in practice. Call our Rolla, Missouri office today at (573) 341-8336 to schedule a free, personalized consultation.
