Wrongful Death – Grieving Families Bill
The current law is unfair
Hasn’t changed since established in 1847; in fact, NY was the first in the country to establish a wrongful death law, consistent with its progressive nature and its place as a leader in our country; but many other states have gone far beyond that, so that we have now been left in the dust when it comes to leadership and fairness.
The wrongful death statute is not fair. No one can dispute it. It allows negligent persons and companies to kill the elderly, the unemployed and children and not be liable for the consequences. When there’s no pain and suffering, cases for children and the elderly are worth nothing, because they’re not wage earners and have no dependents. Try telling that to the grieving mother of a child just killed by a negligent driver on the way to school.
People are worth a lot more than the paycheck they bring home.
The country feels the same way. Many states all over the nation recognize that they need to compensate grieving families if justice is to be accomplished. In establishing the victims compensation fund after the 9/11 attacks, express authority was given to compensate the families for grief. At the time, Governor Pataki and the Attorney General both publicly applauded that decision because of the inability of the current law to properly compensate the tragically affected families.
Sometimes it bothers me personally that when there’s a high profile tragedy, everyone comes out of the woodwork to offer help, money and support but no such empathy is generated for individual tragedies. Earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, murdered children in schools, all those victims and their families routinely get the support they need, emotionally and monetarily and that’s how it should be. But I also represent people whose deaths aren’t newsworthy, aren’t interesting. A person crossing in a crosswalk was mowed down by a driver looking at his cell phone. Happens all the time (in queens last night) but those things don’t always make the news and don’t get the public involved the way they get involved when there are a number of victims.
But what difference is it to the family? Are the parents of little Jimmy, killed when going to school, less grief stricken than the parents of James, who was killed when working for Goldman Sacks in the Twin Towers?
The tort system should treat all victims of negligence equally. The law doesn’t make any sense and, more than that, it’s dehumanizing and demeaning. I’ve had the misfortune of explaining the law to more than one grieving family in my career and there’s just no way of looking these people in the eye and pretending the law makes sense, because it doesn’t.
They ask how the law could be the way it is, and I tell them that, unfortunately, no one knows about the law or cares about the law until they need it, and then it’s too late. That’s the real problem facing personal injury lawyers when we come up here in Albany for a lot of our issues. We know that the public needs the law changed, but only those families on the other side of grief know why.