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Albuquerque Wrongful Death Lawyers
Losing a loved one in an accident or due to the intentional actions of someone else will have catastrophic effects on your family. Not only do you lose the income that the deceased person earns, but your family is also devastated by the loss, perhaps for the rest of your lives. Although there is no consolation when you have lost a loved one, the law does entitle you to seek justice and accountability in the form of financial compensation from the person or company who was responsible for what happened. First, you should contact a wrongful death lawyer to discuss your case and the possibility of a lawsuit.
What Is a Wrongful Death Case?
A wrongful death case is your family’s own personal injury action when you have lost a loved one due to someone else’s wrongful actions. Here, the death of your family member and the impact that it had on you is your personal injury. A wrongful death case is distinguished from a survival action, which is an accompanying court case that seeks to recover the damages that the deceased person suffered between the time of their injury and death.
What Are Examples of Wrongful Death Cases?
Wrongful death cases can arise in a number of circumstances, including:
- Car accidents
- Truck accidents
- Uber and Lyft accidents
- Pedestrian accidents
- Medical malpractice
- Premises liability accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Bicycle accidents
Who Can File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit in New Mexico?
Under New Mexico law, the personal representative is the one who can file a wrongful death lawsuit. Hopefully, your loved one named a personal representative as part of their estate plan. The court may appoint one to file the lawsuit if there is no personal representative. The hope is that the personal representative would work closely with the individual family members to obtain the best possible result in the lawsuit. A family should be on the same page when seeking wrongful death compensation, given the stakes of the case.
How Do I Win a Wrongful Death Case?
You have two options to begin a wrongful death case. You could either file a claim with a responsible party’s insurance company, or you could sue them directly in court.
To win your lawsuit, you would need to prove that the death was, in fact, wrongful. The most common way of prevailing in a wrongful death claim is to show that someone else was negligent and their actions caused the death of your loved one. Specifically, you are looking to prove some type of unreasonable conduct that departed from the standard of care that the responsible party owed to your loved one. Like any other personal injury case, you would need to meet your burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence.
How Much Is My Wrongful Death Case Worth?
Your damages in a wrongful death case are intended to compensate your family for exactly what you lost. Your loved one played a certain role in the family, and their passing leaves voids in many areas. If you are able to prove that someone was to blame for their death, you can be compensated for all of them.
Wrongful death compensation may include:
- The wages your loved one would have earned over the course of their working career.
- The grief and trauma that your family endured because of the wrongful loss of a loved one.
- Payment for the support and guidance that you received from the deceased family member.
- The close and loving relationship that you had with the deceased person.
How Is the Money Divided in a Wrongful Death Case?
New Mexico law specifies who may receive proceeds from a wrongful death case.
The order of distribution under the law is as follows:
- If there is a surviving spouse and no children, the spouse would receive all of the money.
- If there is a surviving spouse and children, the spouse would receive half of the money, and the child or children would receive the other half.
- If there is no surviving spouse but there are children, the children would divide the entirety of the proceeds.
- If the victim was a minor child, the father and the mother would each be entitled to half of the proceeds, and if one of them is deceased, then their survivor would receive their money.
- If there is no spouse, children, or parents, the deceased person’s siblings would receive the entirety of the money.
The fact that there is a defined method for dividing the money should reduce some of the potential conflicts, although families may still disagree when there is a substantial amount of money at issue.
How Long Do I Have to File a Wrongful Death Case in New Mexico?
In New Mexico, a statute of limitations applies to every personal injury action. This law restricts the amount of time that you have to file a lawsuit. Here, the statute of limitations for wrongful death cases is three years. If you filed a lawsuit after the statute of limitations expired, the court would dismiss your case, and you would not even get a hearing on the merits.
What Are the Challenges in a Wrongful Death Case?
One of the first major challenges in a wrongful death case is that your loved one is no longer here to tell their side of the story. You may start without some of the key facts that you need to prove your case. A wrongful death lawyer should be brought into your case early so they can conduct a complete investigation before key evidence that you need disappears.
Another hurdle you must overcome is that your damages are completely subjective. You are measuring the specific value that your loved one had in your family unit. The insurance company generally does not like to pay for subjective things. They may also challenge your story about what your loved one meant to you.
Finally, you may lack the will to engage in the legal process when you are dealing with the tragic death of a family member. You may not want to deal with insurance companies and any disputes while your family is still grieving. The good news is that when you hire a wrongful death lawyer, they will handle all of the details of your case, sparing you from having to get excessively involved.
Contact the Albuquerque Wrongful Death Lawyers at Buchanan Law Firm, LLC for Help with Your Case
If your loved one has tragically died due to someone else’s actions, you can begin the legal process by reaching out to the Albuquerque wrongful death lawyers at Buchanan Law Firm, LLC. Schedule a free initial consultation with one of our lawyers by calling us today at 505-900-3559 or contact us online. Our office is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we gladly serve clients in Santa Fe and the surrounding areas.


We Prepare Each Case for Trial
We prep every case as if it will be going to trial. There is no better way to make sure you get the compensation that you deserve than to be ready to fight for you and exhaust all legal remedies. Some firms shy away from trial, we embrace it.

This is a Team Effort
We recognize that every legal matter is different. We’ll listen carefully to learn the details of your situation, as well as your goals. We’ll keep you involved and informed at all times, making certain you know where you stand, what your options are, and your likelihood of success.

We Will Be Straight With You
Whether it is about the value of your case, or how good or bad the evidence is, we will tell it to you straight. We want to help you make the best decisions about your case by giving you the information you need.
We have recovered tens of millions of dollars for our clients.
Hospital negligence resulted in catastrophic injury. This was a case involving a patient who entered the hospital for routine observation but left the hospital with catastrophic and permanent injuries due to neglect and improper treatment. This case involved extensive expert testimony on all aspects of the client’s care, both by hospital administration, hospital employees, and contractors who were involved in her treatment.
Semi-truck negligence caused wrongful death. This case involved a semi-truck driver who was intoxicated on illegal substances and killed our client. The key to this case was both aggressive discovery work, and understanding the trucking laws that regulate truck drivers and motor carriers, so we could prove how reckless it was to put the driver on the road that day.
Semi-truck negligence caused catastrophic injury. This case involved a semi-truck driver who lost control of his vehicle in a high-traffic area, causing devastating injuries to our client. We were able to reconstruct every step of the events leading up to the crash that day to piece together why this happened, using sophisticated experts in reconstruction engineering.
Semi-truck and corporate negligence caused traumatic brain injury. Our client suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of the defendant’s negligence in parking a commercial vehicle. The key to this case was understanding trucking regulations and local ordinances at play to show how the situation should have been handled safely.
Semi-truck causing wrongful death. This sad case involved the tragic death of our clients when a semi-driver was high on illegal substances. The key to this case was working closely with law enforcement and our reconstruction expert to identify all of the assets we could recover for these clients so that they could be as fully compensated as possible.