DOMINA LAW Group pc llo Select Wrongful Death & Personal Injury Cases

Wrongful death is a legal phrase identifying a claim created by statute, which did not exist at common law.  In Nebraska, wrongful death actions arise under Neb Rev Stat §§ 30-809 et seq.  In nearly every American state wrongful death claims are brought under a law known as “Lord Campbell’s Act”.  This British-sounding name for wrongful death suits has its origin in an act of the British Parliament creating wrongful death claims for Great Britain.

Wrongful death can occur as a result of another party’s negligent act, while operating a motor vehicle, providing professional care, or working at a job site.  Defective products, suffering from manufacturing flaws, or design mistakes, can cause wrongful death.

Claims for wrongful death are designed to compensate the deceased person’s next of kin for the loss of the loved one’s care, love, affection, support, advice, and other services.  The wrongful death case is brought for the next of kin, not the decedent.

When death is instantaneous, the next of kin’s claim is the only one to survive.  But, where fright, or mental anguish, or pain precede death and affect a conscious or semiconscious victim a wrongful death claim can be accompanied by a separate claim for conscious pain and suffering.  This conscious pain and suffering claim, unlike the wrongful death claim, seeks damages for what the decedent experienced before death occurs.

DOMINA LAW Group pc llo has handled literally hundreds of wrongful death cases.  We estimate the total number to exceed four hundred in Nebraska.  Our experience with wrongful death ranges from events precipitated by: 

• Death in truck accidents
• Death actions in automobile accidents
• Death actions in farm accidents including power take-off deaths
• Death in farm accidents involving machine entanglement
• Death in farm accidents involving tractor roll-over
• Death in electrocution cases involving crane contact with overhead lines
• Death actions in industrial machine collapse, crushing cases
• Death in roofing accidents
• Death in skylight collapse accidents
• Death actions in OSHA industrial violation cases
• Death in center pivot irrigation cases
• Death in surgery cases
• Death in nursing negligence cases
• Death in home healthcare nursing cases
• Death in cases involving failure to maintain medical equipment including ventilators
• Death in cases involving civilian interaction with negligent military personnel
• Death actions involving massive burn injuries
• Death involving airplane crashes

DOMINA LAW Group pc llo has had good success at keeping its wrongful death litigation out of the appellate courts and resolving it at the trial court level.  Appellate opinions involving wrongful death claims handled by the law firm…

Carpenter v. Cullan
254 Neb 925, 581 NW2d 72 (1998)

Garvin v. Coover
202 Neb 582, 276 NW 2d 225 (1979)

McIlheran v. Lincoln Nat. Life Ins. Co.
31 F.3d 709 (8th Cir. 1994)

Mondelli v. Kendall Homes Corp.
262 Neb. 263 (2001)
(holding that relevant and probative expert testimony must be admitted to the jury)