one of the unique things about

um a death caused by the negligence or

Reckless conduct of another person is

that when that happens obviously the

person who has been killed isn’t

here to defend themselves to fight for

themselves to take care of their family

that’s been left behind financially and

so each state in the United States

has a statute it’s called a wrongful

death statute and they’re all different

now they may have some commonalities

okay but they’re all different and those

statutes dictate number one who can

bring the claim and number two

what can be recovered while bringing the

claim and you would think that it’s

obvious who could bring the claim but

it’s not necessarily obvious and you

have to understand the the purpose of

the wrongful death statutes is to make

sure there’s only one wrongful death

claim brought so they have to identify

who is eligible to bring the claim so

I’ll give you an example and it’s just

an example it’s Colorado do not take

this as legal advice for other states

because you’re going to be wrong if you

do okay in Colorado uh in the first year

after death of somebody if they have a

surviving spouse the surviving spouse

has the exclusive right to bring the

wrongful death claim now when they bring

that claim let’s say it’s a spouse and

they have three kids even if they’re

adult kids when the spouse brings that

claim they’re required to bring it to

recover damages for the whole group but

the initiator can only be the surviving

spouse in the second year after death if

the surviving spouse hasn’t acted in the

first year year the surviving spouse can

still bring one and any one or more of

the surviving children

if there’s no surviving spouse and no

surviving children only in that instance

can surviving parents bring the claim

okay that’s Colorado there are some

states where only the personal

representative appointed for the estate

can bring the claim and the spouse

doesn’t bring it and the children don’t

bring it and the estate brings it and

brings it to recover all of the damages

and in some cases the estate can bring

part of the claim and other designees

can bring others so what’s really

important to gain from this is that it

is a sophisticated process there are

specific statutes that will Define who

can bring them and every state has one

it’s a matter of identifying what those

State statutes are and I can tell you

that we’re talking about my my book in a

different segment but in my book

Unthinkable I do have an appendices I do

have a a list of all of the state

wrongful death statutes and I also have

have them I have a there’s a website for

the book it’s kylebaccus.com and at

kylebackus.com there’s actually a live

click through where you can click

through and I into each state and see

the wrongful death statutes I mean and

anybody can read them it may take you a

little bit to read through a couple of

times but you’ll be able to identify

who’s eligible to bring them in

certainly any lawyer who works in this

field is should know off the top of

their head in your particular state or

if you called my Law Firm you know we do

these cases nationally we know uh by

state we have uh information that that

can tell us who can bring it and when

they can bring it