Los Angeles wrongful death lawyerThe claim belongs to your family.

Wrongful death claims defined

We represent families in Los Angeles County who lost a spouse, parent, child, or partner because of someone else's driving, property, or jobsite. The claim turns on who may file, what it pays, the deadlines, how the money is divided, and what happens when the death occurred at work. Criminal prosecution and probate beyond what a claim requires are separate matters.

A wrongful death claim is the survivors' own claim for their own losses when another person's wrongful act or neglect caused the death. It exists entirely by statute, at Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, which is why who may bring it is a defined list. Here, decedent means the person who died and heir means someone the statute lets bring the claim.

What has to be proved is the underlying tort, meaning the wrongful act, the resulting death, and the damages. That is how Lattimore v. Dickey (2015) 239 Cal.App.4th 959, 968 states the elements, quoted in the Judicial Council's 2025 civil jury instructions. Where the tort is negligence, a failure to use the care a reasonable person would use, CACI No. 400 asks three questions: was the defendant negligent, was there harm, and was the negligence a substantial factor in causing it.

None of that changes because a criminal case exists, or because none does. A decision not to file charges does not close the civil claim.

Eligibility to file

The opening line of section 377.60 says the claim may be asserted by the persons it lists or by the decedent's personal representative on their behalf. Three terms in the list need definitions. Issue means descendants: children, grandchildren, and so on. Intestate succession is the order the Probate Code uses when someone dies without a will. A putative spouse is defined in the statute as the surviving spouse of a void or voidable marriage who the court finds believed in good faith that the marriage was valid.

Subdivision (a) asks nothing about money: a spouse, a domestic partner, and the children file because of who they are, and where there is no surviving issue, standing, the right to bring the claim, passes to whoever would inherit by intestate succession, which is how parents and sometimes siblings qualify. Subdivision (b) asks about money every time, so a putative spouse, that spouse's children, stepchildren, and parents may file only if they were dependent on the decedent. Subdivision (c) covers a minor who need not be a relative at all: one who lived in the decedent's household for the 180 days before the death and depended on the decedent for half or more of their support.

California treats wrongful death as one joint action. In LAOSD Asbestos Cases (2018) 28 Cal.App.5th 862, 872, cited in the CACI No. 3921 sources, the court explained that each heir has a personal and separate claim, but the statutes ordinarily require joint litigation to prevent a series of suits against the same defendant. That is the one-action rule, and it is why an heir who wants no part of a lawsuit still gets named in it. Our guide on who can file a wrongful death claim applies each subdivision to real family situations.

Two claims after a death

The distinction decides where each dollar goes. Wrongful death money belongs to the heirs. Survival money belongs to the estate and is distributed by will or intestacy, which can put it in different hands. Section 377.62 lets the two be joined and tried together.

One part of this law changed recently, and it changes what a family can recover. Code of Civil Procedure section 377.34, subdivision (a), limits survival damages to the loss the decedent sustained before death, including any penalties or punitive damages the decedent could have recovered, and states that they do not include damages for pain, suffering, or disfigurement. Subdivision (b) created an exception with an end date written into it: those damages are recoverable only if the action was granted a preference (an expedited trial date) under section 36 before January 1, 2022, or was filed on or after January 1, 2022 and before January 1, 2026.

That window closed on January 1, 2026 and the Legislature did not extend it. For an action filed on or after that date, subdivision (a) is the whole rule again. The Judicial Council says the same in its own words: the Judicial Council's own notes on CACI No. 3919, Survival Damages, called the Directions for Use, state that damages for pain, suffering, or disfigurement are generally not recoverable in a survival action, except at times in an elder abuse case, and that section 377.34(b) permits them only for the actions inside that window, citing Quiroz v. Seventh Ave. Center (2006) 140 Cal.App.4th 1256, 1265.

Our page on survival actions and what changed in 2026 covers the statute line by line.

Wrongful death damages

The list is set by instruction. CACI No. 3921, the instruction a Los Angeles jury hears in a wrongful death trial, sets out four categories of economic damages, meaning verifiable money losses: the financial support the decedent would have contributed during the shorter of the two life expectancies, the loss of gifts or benefits the survivor expected, funeral and burial expenses, and the reasonable value of household services the decedent would have provided.

It then sets out three categories of noneconomic damages, losses with no receipt attached: the loss of the decedent's love, companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, and moral support; the loss of the enjoyment of sexual relations; and the loss of the decedent's training and guidance. Future economic damages must be reduced to present cash value, the smaller sum today that would grow into those payments. Noneconomic damages are stated in current dollars and not reduced again.

The instruction also sets limits families are rarely prepared for. CACI No. 3921 directs the jury, in three numbered lines, not to consider the plaintiff's grief, sorrow, or mental anguish, the decedent's pain and suffering, or the poverty or wealth of the plaintiff. Krouse v. Graham (1977) 19 Cal.3d 59, 72, quoted in the instruction's sources, states it directly: California cases have uniformly held that damages for mental and emotional distress, including grief and sorrow, are not recoverable in a wrongful death action. The law compensates the relationship. It does not compensate the grieving.

Punitive damages, which punish rather than compensate, are the category people ask about. Section 377.61 excludes damages recoverable under section 377.34 from a wrongful death award, and Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (1976) 17 Cal.3d 425, 450, cited in CACI No. 3921, reads the statutes as barring punitive damages in a wrongful death action. They reach the case through the survival action, and Civil Code section 3294, subdivision (d), adds a direct route: punitive damages may be recovered under the survival action statutes where the death resulted from a homicide for which the defendant was convicted of a felony. Our guide to wrongful death damages and how they are divided goes through each category and how it is proved.

Division among heirs

A California jury usually returns one number for the whole family. CACI No. 3921 carries the line for that: consider the losses suffered by all plaintiffs, return a single amount, and the judge divides it. Section 377.61 says the same in statute, directing that the court shall determine the respective rights in an award of the persons entitled to assert the claim.

Canavin v. Pacific Southwest Airlines (1983) 148 Cal.App.3d 512, 535 to 536, quoted in the CACI sources, explains why the judge does it rather than the jury: the heirs' interests compete, and individual shares of lost support are hard to fix where minors are involved. A widow and an adult stepchild do not have the same loss, and a case that recovers for both has to sort that out.

In practice the split is settled by agreement among the heirs far more often than by a ruling, a negotiation inside the family at the worst possible moment. When two heirs want incompatible things, one lawyer cannot advise both, and the answer is separate counsel for one of them.

Filing deadlines

Each line comes from the statute. Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives two years for an action for the death of an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. Government Code section 945.6 gives six months to sue after a written rejection is delivered or mailed, or two years from accrual where no written notice is given. Labor Code section 5406 sets one year for a death benefit claim and bars proceedings more than 240 weeks from the date of injury.

Common fatal cases

The statute is the same every time. What changes is the defendant and which evidence disappears first.

• Traffic deaths. A car crash, a commercial truck, a motorcycle, a person struck in a crosswalk, or a rider in a bike lane. See also fatal car accident injuries and, when a work vehicle was involved, fatal commercial vehicle crashes.
• Falls and unsafe property. A stairway with no handrail, an unlit garage, or an unguarded roof edge. See slip and fall and premises liability.
• Jobsite deaths. Falls from height, trench collapses, equipment strikes, and electrocution. See construction accidents.
• Assaults on poorly secured property. An apartment complex, hotel, or parking lot with a documented history and no working lock, camera, or guard.
• Defective products and machinery. A failed component, a missing guard, or a vehicle defect that turns a survivable crash fatal.
• Injuries that end in death weeks later. A severe head injury or a catastrophic injury survived at first. See brain injury.

Deaths at work

Two claims usually exist, and most families hear about one. Against the employer, workers' compensation is normally the whole remedy: Labor Code section 3602, subdivision (a), makes it the sole and exclusive remedy of the employee or the dependents against the employer, except as provided in that section and in sections 3706 and 4558.

Subdivision (b) names three narrow exceptions that open a lawsuit against the employer: a willful physical assault by the employer, an injury aggravated by the employer's fraudulent concealment of the injury and its connection to the work, and a death caused by a defective product the employer made and sold to an independent third person who then provided it for the employee's use. Separately, section 3706 lets the dependents sue an employer that failed to secure the payment of compensation, as if the workers' compensation law did not apply.

The claim that is easy to miss runs against everyone who is not the employer: the general contractor, the property owner, the equipment maker, the other driver. Labor Code section 3852 preserves that action, and its closing line matters where a workers' compensation lien, the comp insurer's claim to be repaid, is in the file: the respective rights against the third person of the heirs claiming under section 377.60, and of an employer claiming reimbursement, are determined by the court.

• 419California workplace deaths in 2024, down from 504 in 2022Cal/OSHA CFOI, April 2026
• 81of those in construction, second among all industriesCal/OSHA CFOI, April 2026
• 6.2construction deaths per 100,000 workers, against 2.5 statewideCal/OSHA CFOI, April 2026

Those figures come from Fatal Occupational Injuries in California, 2015 to 2024, published by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health in April 2026. That report also counts 765 construction deaths across the ten years, and 94 deaths from falls, slips, and trips in 2024, 43 of them construction workers. Our page on fatal workplace and construction deaths covers the death benefit, the exclusive remedy rule, and the limits on suing a general contractor.

Immigration status of the deceased

Section 377.60 says nothing about citizenship or immigration status. The list is family relationships and, in the second tier, financial dependence.

California also closed the subject off inside the courtroom. Evidence Code section 351.2 provides that in a civil action for personal injury or wrongful death, evidence of a person's immigration status shall not be admitted into evidence, nor shall discovery into a person's immigration status be permitted. In a work death, Civil Code section 3339 adds that all protections, rights, and remedies available under state law, except a reinstatement remedy prohibited by federal law, are available regardless of immigration status to anyone who has applied for employment or been employed in this state.

Our first weeks on the case

1. 1
   We do not ask you to relive it on the first call

   We need the date, the location, who was present, and whether an insurer or an agency has already contacted you. The rest can wait, and most of it we can obtain without asking you to tell it again.

2. 2
   We preserve evidence while it still exists

   Vehicles get repaired, jobsites get cleared, and cameras record over themselves on a loop measured in days. Preservation letters go out first.

3. 3
   We collect the official record

   The coroner's file, the collision report, any Cal/OSHA investigation, the 911 audio, and the scene photographs. Some take months, which is one reason no case can be valued in week two.

4. 4
   We work out who may legally bring the claim

   That means reading section 377.60 against your actual family, and opening a probate estate where the survival action needs a personal representative.

5. 5
   We handle the insurer, and say early what the claim will not cover

   The first offer is a negotiating position, not a valuation. Recorded statements and record requests come to us. You hear about the grief exclusion from us in month one, not from a defense lawyer a year later.

There is no fee unless we recover. An attorney handles the case from the first call through trial, and that attorney is Josh Kohanim.

Cases without a wrongful death claim

Some deaths are not claims, and a family is owed that answer.

• No wrongful act or neglect caused the death. A medical event with no missed diagnosis behind it, or a single vehicle crash with no defect and no road hazard. The statute requires a tort.
• The person who died was solely at fault. Comparative fault reduces a recovery rather than ending it, but at 100 percent there is nothing left to reduce.
• Nobody in section 377.60 survives and no estate is opened. A sibling who was not dependent and does not take by intestate succession has no standing, however close they were.
• The deadline has run. Two years, or six months against a public entity. This is the most common reason a real claim cannot be brought.
• The only defendant is the employer. Where the employer carried coverage, no third party contributed, and none of the three exceptions in Labor Code 3602(b) applies, the death benefit is the remedy.
• Nobody can be identified or reached. A hit and run with no plate and no camera, or a defendant with no insurance and no assets, leaves a valid claim with nothing behind it. Uninsured motorist coverage on a family policy sometimes answers this one.

Next steps

The answer is narrower than families expect. The claim belongs to the people section 377.60 names. It is worth what your family lost in support, in services, and in the relationship itself, measured by CACI No. 3921 and not by a number on a website. It does not pay for your grief, and in a case filed now the estate's separate claim no longer pays for what the person who died went through.

Write down what you know, put the deadlines above on a calendar, and do not sign anything an insurer sends before an attorney has read it. When you are ready to talk, we start with the date and the place.