Wrongful Death Damages in a Florida Medical Malpractice Case

The general public thinks medical malpractice lawyers bring too many cases. The truth is that at least in Florida, the overwhelming majority of medical malpractice cases are never brought. The reason is that the medical profession gets special treatment under the law. The special treatment makes it very hard to pursue a medical malpractice case. One example of special treatment involves medical malpractice cases involving death.

As I discussed in a previous post about wrongful death, in most wrongful death cases, if a person dies with no spouse, their children are entitled to pain and suffering damages. Furthermore, if they have no children, the persons parents are entitled to pain and suffering damages. However, when a fatality is caused by medical malpractice, and the person has no spouse, only children under 25 are entitled to pain and suffering damages. If there are no children or the children are 25 or older, no one, including the parents is entitled to pain and suffering damages.

The harshness of this special treatment becomes clear when you realize that if someone either has no job or makes very little income dies with no spouse and either never had children or their children have all grown up, there are really no damages worth perusing. Basically that means that the medical profession can routinely cause the death of most unmarried people over the age of 55 without the fear of being held responsible for the death.