Milwaukee Wrongful Death Lawyer

When a family member dies in an accident, you deserve justice in the form of a settlement that can be used to protect your family’s financial future. To find out how to proceed with your case, contact a Milwaukee wrongful death lawyer.

The death of a loved one is a terrible thing to experience. Sometimes, there is no one to blame, but when the death is due to someone else’s negligence or mistake, that person or entity can be held financially responsible.

If you have lost a loved one in a car crash, due to nursing home neglect, or because of any other accident type, you should immediately contact a Milwaukee wrongful death lawyer from the Law Offices of Gary S. Greenberg.

Even if criminal charges get filed, they won’t help you protect what your family built together or award you any financial damages. You and your family deserve justice through financial compensation, and we can help you get exactly that.

Who Can File a Wrongful Death Claim in Wisconsin?

After an accident resulted in the death of a loved one, you may have been worried about eligibility for the wrongful death claim. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about your rights to sue. Our lawyers can review your rights to compensation, so you know before you act whether you’re due compensation for your suffering. 

Wisconsin has strict rules about who can file a wrongful death claim, and no matter who makes the claim, it must be done within the three-year statute of limitations. The only people who can file for wrongful death are as follows:

• The executor or personal representative of the deceased’s estate
• The surviving spouse or domestic partner
• The surviving children
• The surviving parent or guardian of the deceased

Wisconsin families may need a lawyer to take the right first steps toward compensation. If there are dependents left behind, the court must set aside some amount of compensation to care for them—no matter who filed the claim. For instance, if there are children from a previous marriage but the legal inheritor is an estranged stepmother to those children, the court is permitted to set up to 50 percent of the compensation aside for them.

Your Milwaukee wrongful death lawyer will be well-equipped to go through the details and provide clarity for your unique situation.

Financial Compensation for a Wrongful Death

Many accident victims don’t realize just how many damages and losses should be included in their final settlement amount. These items can extend well beyond just the obvious financial expenses, such as those for medical treatment the deceased may have received for their injuries or property damage. It can even include the negative impact that your family member’s death has had on your life.

The financial impact alone for wrongful death can be severe. The injuries your family member may have faced may have been expensive to treat. As well as the possible costs of damage done to their personal property. But the economic damages, or emotional and mental suffering, are intangible and can be tough to calculate. You may need your lawyer to calculate these damages and represent you to get fairly compensated.

You will need the compassionate yet unbiased eyes of a Milwaukee wrongful death lawyer to critically collect, evaluate, and quantify all of your losses:

• Medical expenses accrued by efforts to keep the deceased alive
• Memorial, funeral, and burial expenses
• Lost future wages and other financial losses estimated through retirement age
• Loss of society and companionship, also known as loss of consortium, can be up to $350,000 for an adult and $500,000 for a minor killed by another’s wrongful acts
• Survivorship damages for the pain and suffering that affected the victim before his or her wrongful death in Milwaukee

Making the Legal Process as Easy as Possible

The death of a loved one is enough to worry about without also having to worry about fighting a legal battle for the compensation your family needs to protect everything it’s worked toward. Your Milwaukee wrongful death lawyer will be by your side every step of the way, handling the legal challenges so you don’t have to. We will handle everything possible so you can grieve and heal with your family.

One of the most important legal challenges your Milwaukee attorney for wrongful death can help you deal with is proving your wrongful death claim. In order to prove your case, an investigation must be conducted. We must determine what caused your loved one’s death and who is liable for damages.

Often, the cause of the fatal accident can determine fault. For example, if your loved one was ill and died because of prescribed medication, our lawyers can seek answers about whether the cause of death was a defect in the medication, an incorrect dosage recommendation, or pharmacy negligence. 

Any number of factors could have caused your loved one’s death. For example, if your loved one died in a car accident, you will need to figure out what caused the crash and who was at fault. That’s just one example, and many different people or organizations could have been liable for the wrongful death of your loved one.

A few examples of possible at-fault parties are listed below:

• Employers
• Nursing homes
• Daycares
• Manufacturers of automobiles
• Companies
• Stores
• Drivers

Once we have determined what caused your loved one’s death and who was responsible, you will then have to prove your case. Proving liability isn’t easy—it takes experienced attorneys to handle the investigation of a wrongful death case.

Our firm will need to collect all of the available evidence and record witness testimony, but this needs to be done quickly to be effective and convincing in court. This will give us a much stronger position when negotiating a settlement with the responsible parties and their insurance company, so contacting us swiftly is very important.

Dealing with Insurance Companies During Your Milwaukee Wrongful Death Case

As if you haven’t suffered enough, you will likely be forced to suffer more before you finally receive the compensation you need to move on with your life and heal from this tragic loss.

It may be obvious to everyone around you that your loved one died a wrongful death, but any involved insurance companies are going to deny it with every breath. They aren’t really trying to hurt you because they enjoy being cruel, but they are doing it for a reason. They don’t want to admit defeat and pay you full compensation for your loss.

Why do they do this? Because they care about their profits—not how this horrible experience is affecting you and your family. You must be very careful when dealing with insurance companies. They will try to deny your claim and refute your evidence in an attempt to lower the value of your Milwaukee wrongful death claim.

Insurers have many tactics of lowering the overall settlement amount they must give to you, such as claiming your loved one died because of other factors outside of the accident or that your loved one was somehow to blame for the incident that resulted in his or her death.

They will use anything you say out of context in an effort to place the blame on your deceased loved one, which will allow them to save their bottom line. Your lawyer will handle all of the communications and negotiations so you never have to worry about inadvertently giving them an unfair advantage.

Not Every Claim Can Be Settled

It’s true that most personal injury claims settle outside of the courtroom, but not all of them do. And many wrongful death cases don’t. Insurers and at-fault parties may not want to settle a wrongful death claim because they believe they can win in court.

How do you calculate the damages when a person has lost his or her life? It’s not easy, so settling cases for wrongful death can be difficult. Insurance companies will sometimes refuse to settle these cases, and then it’s up to your Milwaukee wrongful death claim lawyer to fight for justice for you and your loved one in court.

Don’t worry. We’re ready and willing to fight for the justice your family deserves and to see that you get the monetary compensation you need to provide for a future without your loved one. We can represent you and your family when the at-fault party doesn’t want to compensate you. 

Acting on time with a lawyer’s help is also key. You only have three years to file a lawsuit before you may be barred from being able to take action. Our lawyers can help clients file their claims on time before those three years have passed. 

Get Help from a Milwaukee Wrongful Death Attorney

If you have lost a loved one due to the negligence or recklessness of someone else, do not hesitate to seek compensation for your loss. Your family deserves to protect the future you were working toward before this tragedy. Your family may have suffered a tragic loss, but your lawyer can help you get justice and closure when someone’s negligence causes such a painful loss. Our lawyers represent Indiana families like yours with the understanding and care your family needs now.

Call us at 414-271-7007 to schedule a free, no-obligation legal consultation with a Milwaukee wrongful death lawyer from the Law Offices of Gary S. Greenberg. You may also fill out the form at the bottom of this page to have someone from our firm contact you at a later time.