What Damages Are Available in a Pennsylvania Wrongful Death Claim?

Pennsylvania Law Separates a Family’s Losses From the Losses the Person Suffered Before Death

Losing a family member to someone else’s negligence brings a kind of grief that doesn’t leave much room for thinking about legal deadlines or damages categories. But the financial consequences don’t pause for grief. Funeral expenses arrive, household income may disappear, and a family can suddenly be without the person who provided financial support, care, guidance, and companionship.

Pennsylvania law recognizes two different kinds of harm after a fatal accident. A Pennsylvania wrongful death claim compensates certain surviving family members for losses they suffer because of the death. A separate survival action preserves the personal injury claim the deceased person could have pursued if they had lived.

The two claims can arise from the same fatal car accident, truck crash, medical error, unsafe property condition, or another act of negligence, but they compensate different losses and the proceeds are distributed differently.

Who Can Recover Through a Pennsylvania Wrongful Death Claim?

Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 8301, a Pennsylvania wrongful death action exists for the benefit of the deceased person’s spouse, children, or parents.

The damages are distributed among those beneficiaries according to the shares they would receive from the decedent’s personal estate under Pennsylvania intestacy law. The statute also provides that wrongful death proceeds distributed to those beneficiaries aren’t subject to the deceased person’s creditors.

The procedure for filing the action is slightly different from the question of who receives the money. Pennsylvania generally requires the personal representative of the estate to bring the wrongful death action. If no action has been filed within six months after the death, an eligible beneficiary may bring the action as trustee ad litem on behalf of everyone legally entitled to share in the damages.

What Damages Are Available in the Wrongful Death Claim?

The wrongful death claim focuses on what the surviving family has lost because their loved one is no longer there.

• Funeral and Burial Expenses: Pennsylvania’s statute expressly allows recovery of reasonable funeral expenses associated with the death.
• Hospital, Nursing, and Medical Expenses: Reasonable medical expenses resulting from the injuries that caused the death can also be recovered under the Wrongful Death Act.
• Estate Administration Expenses: The statute allows reasonable administration expenses necessitated by the injuries causing death.
• Lost Financial Support: A spouse, child, or parent may be able to recover the financial contributions the deceased person probably would have provided.
• Loss of Household Services: The value of services the deceased provided can matter, including childcare, household work, maintenance, transportation, and other contributions to family life.
• Loss of Society, Comfort, and Guidance: Pennsylvania wrongful death damages can reflect the loss of companionship, comfort, protection, guidance, and other aspects of the family relationship that can’t be measured by a paycheck alone.

These losses depend heavily on the family relationship and the role the deceased person actually played. A claim involving a parent raising young children can look very different from one involving an adult child who regularly provided financial and personal support to an elderly parent.

What Does the Survival Action Cover?

A survival action works differently. Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 8302, the person’s existing cause of action survives their death.

In practical terms, the estate steps into the position of the person who died and can pursue damages that person could have recovered if they had survived.

• Conscious Pain and Suffering: If the deceased person was conscious and experienced physical pain or mental suffering between the injury and death, those damages may be recoverable through the survival action.
• Lost Earnings Between Injury and Death: The estate may seek the earning power the person lost during the period between being injured and dying.
• Future Lost Earning Power: Pennsylvania law can allow recovery for earning power the deceased would have had during the remainder of the expected working life, generally reduced by personal maintenance expenses and adjusted to avoid duplication with financial-support damages recovered through the wrongful death claim.

The survival recovery becomes an asset of the estate. That means it generally passes according to the person’s will or Pennsylvania intestacy law and is handled through estate administration, rather than being paid directly to wrongful death beneficiaries outside the estate.

Wrongful Death and Survival Damages Aren’t the Same

Why Can Lost Earnings Appear in Both Claims?

Lost income is one of the areas where wrongful death and survival damages can appear to overlap.

In the wrongful death claim, the focus is generally on the portion of the deceased person’s earnings and other financial contributions that would have supported the spouse, children, or parents.

The survival action looks at the deceased person’s lost earning power. Pennsylvania courts have described future survival damages as the person’s earning power over the expected working life, less personal maintenance expenses.

Those calculations can’t simply be stacked on top of one another. Pennsylvania law requires the claims to be handled in a way that prevents the same lost earnings from being recovered twice.

That can make economic evidence especially important when a deceased person had a long expected career, substantial benefits, growing earnings, or family members who depended heavily on their income.

Does the Person Have to Survive for a Period of Time to Recover Pain and Suffering?

A survival claim for pain and suffering depends on evidence that the person consciously experienced pain, fear, or other suffering before death.

There isn’t a rule requiring the person to survive for a particular number of hours or days. What matters is whether the available evidence supports conscious suffering between the injury and death.

Medical records, emergency personnel, witnesses, video, statements made by the injured person, and expert medical testimony may become relevant to that question.

If death was instantaneous and there’s no evidence of conscious pain or suffering, that particular category of survival damages may not be available. Other wrongful death and survival damages can still remain.

Why Are Both Claims Often Pursued Together?

Although wrongful death and survival actions are legally distinct, both may arise from the same fatal event.

A wrongful death claim alone doesn’t compensate the deceased person’s conscious pain and suffering before death. A survival action alone doesn’t compensate the family for losing the person’s financial support, services, companionship, comfort, or guidance.

Pennsylvania’s Wrongful Death Act itself addresses the need to prevent duplicate recovery and requires prior actions involving the same injuries to be consolidated with the wrongful death claim when necessary.

That distinction can matter after fatal truck accidents, negligent medical treatment, serious premises accidents, and other incidents in which the evidence may support damages belonging both to the estate and to the surviving family.

When a death may have resulted from negligent medical treatment, the underlying liability issues can also require the type of specialized evidence used in a Pennsylvania medical malpractice claim.

The Two-Year Deadline Can Arrive Quickly

Pennsylvania generally applies a two-year statute of limitations to actions seeking damages for personal injury or death caused by another person’s negligence. That rule appears in 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524.

For wrongful death, the limitations period generally begins when the person dies. Pennsylvania appellate courts have also held that a survival action is generally subject to the same two-year limitations period, although the accrual analysis can involve additional issues depending on the underlying claim.

Two years can seem like a long time while a family is grieving, but evidence from the underlying accident doesn’t wait. Vehicles can be repaired, surveillance footage can be erased, physical evidence can disappear, and witnesses’ memories can become less precise.

Early investigation can be particularly important after a fatal personal injury accident when several parties dispute responsibility.

What if the Person Who Died Was Partly at Fault?

Pennsylvania’s comparative-negligence law can affect a negligence-based wrongful death or survival recovery.

Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 7102, negligence attributed to the injured person doesn’t automatically bar recovery as long as that negligence wasn’t greater than the causal negligence of the defendant or defendants against whom recovery is sought.

If the deceased person was found partly responsible but still within the statutory threshold, damages are reduced according to that percentage of responsibility. If the deceased person’s negligence was greater than the causal negligence of the defendant or defendants from whom recovery is sought, recovery can be barred.

That makes accident reconstruction, photographs, witness statements, vehicle data, medical evidence, and other proof of how the fatal incident occurred important before damages are ever calculated.

Romanow Law Group Can Help Your Family Understand Both Claims

If your family has lost someone because of another person’s negligence, Romanow Law Group can investigate what happened and determine which wrongful death and survival damages may be available.

Before founding Romanow Law Group, David Romanow served as trial counsel for the catastrophic injury division of a large personal injury firm and worked on cases involving paralysis, amputations, brain injuries, and other catastrophic harm. He was involved in cases that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements.

Every wrongful death case is different. The compensation that may be available depends on the cause of death, the relationship of the surviving beneficiaries, the deceased person’s earnings and contributions, evidence of conscious suffering, available insurance, liability, and many other facts.

Contact us for a free consultation. We handle qualifying cases on a contingency fee basis, so there’s no attorney fee unless we recover compensation for you.

“I was involved in a car accident, and I did my research before selecting an attorney. All the references said Romanow Law Group was the best, and sure enough, they are! They got me the maximum amount of money the law allows for my car accident injuries.” – Amy B., ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐