Phoenix Wrongful Death Lawyer

Arizona names who can bring the claim and who it is brought for. A surviving spouse, a child, a parent or guardian, or the personal representative of the estate files it, on behalf of the surviving spouse, children, and parents. When none of them survive, the claim is brought for the estate.^[1]

All of them share a single case. The Arizona Supreme Court held in Wilmot v. Wilmot (2002) that all of the statutory beneficiaries' claims belong in a single action, and that the family member who files owes duties to the others whose claims ride along. The jury then divides the recovery among them in proportion to their damages.

Brothers, sisters, and grandparents are not statutory beneficiaries and cannot recover in their own names, though they can be witnesses to what the family lost. A beneficiary convicted of killing the person who died is barred from sharing in the recovery.

The same rules apply across the state, as set out in Arizona wrongful death law, and in Phoenix the case is usually filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Because only one case can go forward, the family should agree early on who files and how everyone else will be kept informed, before anyone signs with an insurer.

A wrongful death claim against an Arizona public entity, which includes the state, its agencies, and every city and county, starts with a written notice of claim served within 180 days. The notice has to state a specific dollar amount and the facts that support it, or the claim is barred.^[4] The lawsuit itself then has to be filed within one year.

Those deadlines apply to a death caused by a city vehicle, a county road defect, or a state highway hazard. A crash with a transit or contractor vehicle needs its own check of who owned and ran it, because a private operator falls under the ordinary two-year rule instead. The steps for the county are laid out in the Maricopa County notice of claim rules.

Most Phoenix death cases never involve the city at all. When one might, we would rather spend a few weeks ruling the government out than let the 180 days pass while we decide.

No average predicts it. Arizona tells the jury to award the damages it finds fair and just for the loss the death caused each surviving family member, weighing any mitigating or aggravating circumstances.^[5]

The State Bar's jury instructions list what that covers: the loss of love, affection, companionship, care, protection, and guidance; the family's grief, sorrow, anguish, and mental suffering; the income and services the person would have provided; funeral and burial costs; and medical expenses. Each loss has to come from the death itself, and the full measure is set out under what Arizona families can recover.

No statute caps the award.^[6] Aggravating circumstances, such as a drunk or racing driver, can support punitive damages, which Arizona courts have allowed in death cases since Boies v. Cole (1965).

What can be collected is a separate question. A Phoenix driver may carry only Arizona's minimum $25,000 per person in liability coverage, so the value of a claim often depends on finding every responsible party: an employer whose driver was on the job, a trucking company, a property owner, or a government defendant.

Because each family member's share follows that person's own loss, the evidence has to be gathered person by person, from the surviving spouse to an adult child who lives in another state.

Two years from the date of death. Arizona treats a death claim as accruing on the day the person dies.^[8]

A claim against a public entity runs faster: 180 days for the notice of claim and one year to file suit. A death from medical care at Valleywise, the county's public hospital system, falls under that same 180-day rule, and the expert affidavit and other steps for Phoenix medical malpractice claims apply to any death from medical negligence.

For many Phoenix families, the first real deadline is the 180-day notice, which falls about six months after the death.