Hi, this is Matt Eason. I’m a wrongful death and personal injury attorney here in Sacramento. I’ve been practicing in that area of law for over 25 years. I recently received a question asking, “What is death by negligence?”
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Death by negligence and wrongful death are often interchangeable, although they’re not technically the same. Wrongful death is caused by anyone’s criminal conduct or failure to act. So wrongful death can range from “mere negligence,” such as a car accident or something along those lines, to “reckless conduct,” which would involve a DUI, to “intentional torts,” such as murder.
So, wrongful death is a vast category. Death by negligence is one of the subsets of that. It is where someone acted negligently and caused someone to pass away. Most wrongful death actions are death by negligence because, in that situation, there’s usually insurance coverage that will help compensate the victim’s family. Failure is a term that means that someone who owed a duty to act failed to act as a reasonable person would have in the same or similar circumstances. So death by negligence, therefore, is when someone’s death was caused by someone else who failed to act as a reasonable person in the same or similar circumstances.
Suppose you’ve lost a loved one through death by negligence or the wrongful misconduct of someone else, and you want to ask about possibly bringing a wrongful death action. In that case, I hope you’ll consider contacting one of the wrongful death lawyers in Sacramento at my firm or me.
