A wrongful death lawsuit is a lawsuit that the surviving family members file to seek compensation for the loss of their loved one. If you believe that somebody has died through the negligence of someone else, you have the right as a family member of that deceased person to obtain those medical records.
You will go to the hospital or the doctor’s office and sign a piece of paper that states that you are a family member of the deceased person. According to AllLaw, they have the obligation within a certain period to turn over those records to you. You can have the authorities review and investigate those medical records to see if a cause of action may exist. A wrongful death case does not require an autopsy. An autopsy, if not performed within the first few days of a person’s death, often is never completed. That does not preclude a person from pursuing a wrongful death case.
You can use medical records, experts and expert testimony to establish the cause of a person’s death. So long as you can connect that to a person’s negligence, you can pursue a wrongful death case with or without an autopsy. If an individual is married at the time of his or her death, the surviving spouse and their children can recover damages in a wrongful death case. If a person is not married and does not have children, the parents and the siblings of the deceased person can have a claim. So, it depends on when the person dies and what their status is at the time of their death.
