West Palm Beach Wrongful Death Lawyer
A family loses somebody and is then handed a funeral to arrange, an income that has stopped, and a company that already has lawyers on it. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our West Palm Beach personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Palm Beach County since 1993.
Wrongful Death claims in West Palm Beach
The other side had counsel within days, and you are being asked for paperwork while you are still arranging a service. Meanwhile the mortgage is due, the income has stopped, and nobody has given you a straight account of what actually happened. Getting that account, and providing for the people left behind, is what we do from the first call.
A wrongful death action arising in West Palm Beach is brought in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit by the personal representative of the estate. Palm Beach County’s older population means these claims frequently involve estates with existing wills and, sometimes, trust arrangements that affect who is appointed and how quickly.
A Palm Beach County wrongful death claim is brought by the personal representative of the estate, and the Florida statute decides which survivors may recover and for what. The general deadline is two years from the death, and a claim against a government body carries a much shorter notice requirement. Opening the estate is the first practical step.
What to do after a wrongful death in West Palm Beach
- Nothing has to be decided this week. The deadline is measured in years and almost nothing is lost by taking two weeks. What is worth doing early is keeping paper: the hospital records, the police report number, the bills as they arrive, and a note of who has called and what they said. Families frequently call us because somebody asked them to sign something and it did not feel right, and that instinct is usually correct.
- Do not sign a release, and be careful about a recorded statement. An insurer may make an early offer, sometimes a considerate one, and it will come with a release. A release cannot be reopened. Nobody should sign one before there is a clear picture of what happened and who is responsible, and a family is not required to be recorded by the other side while they are arranging a funeral.
- Ask what became of the vehicle, the equipment or the scene. Whatever was involved may be repaired, released or scrapped within weeks, and once it is gone it cannot be examined. A short written request that it be preserved is often all that is needed, and it can be sent long before anybody decides whether to bring a claim.
- An estate has to be opened before anything can be filed. Florida requires the claim to be brought by a personal representative of the estate rather than by the family directly, under Fla. Stat. § 768.20. It is a probate step, it takes time, and it is the one thing worth starting early even where the family has not decided anything else.
- Ask before you agree to an autopsy decision either way. In some deaths the medical examiner decides and the family has no say. In others there is a choice, and it is made in the first day or two while nobody is thinking about evidence. Where the cause of death may be disputed later, that decision is difficult to revisit.
Where these happen in West Palm Beach
Palm Beach County covers a very wide range in a short distance, from the interstate and the coastal cities to the agricultural west, and the setting usually decides what evidence exists and how far the medical response had to travel.
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I-95 and the coastal main roads
The corridor that carries most of the county’s traffic, and most of its fatal collisions.
- Commercial and passenger vehicle collisions at speed
- Trauma care running to St. Mary’s Medical Center, which documents the sequence
- Vehicles released and repaired within days unless somebody asks for them to be held
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The western agricultural corridors
US-27, SR 80 and the roads through the Glades, on undivided sections with nothing between opposing traffic.
- Head-on collisions with no median to absorb them
- Long distances to definitive care, which changes the medical timeline
- Little or no camera coverage, so the physical evidence and vehicle data carry the case
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Pools, waterways and the coast
Drownings at residential and community pools, and boating deaths on the Intracoastal and offshore.
- Gate, fence and alarm requirements that can be measured against a code
- Supervision arrangements at community and rental properties
- Vessels moved or cleaned before an inspection, and witnesses scattered by evening
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Care facilities
The county has a large older population and a correspondingly large number of nursing and assisted living facilities.
- Care records kept by the facility that would be the defendant
- State inspection and complaint history, which comes from a source the facility does not control
- Staffing records, which are frequently what a neglect claim turns on
What causes them
- Motorcycle and pedestrian collisions, where there is nothing between a person and a vehicle
- Falls from height on construction sites, and objects falling onto people below
- Drownings, in pools where the gate, the alarm or the supervision was not what it was supposed to be
- Violence at properties where the owner already knew there was a problem and did nothing about it
- Medical care that went wrong, where the family is given an account that does not match what they saw
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Children
Minor children may recover for lost parental companionship, instruction and guidance, and for their own mental pain and suffering. Adult children may recover those same losses where there is no surviving spouse, which is one of the places the statute is narrower than families expect.
Parents
Parents of a child who died as a minor may recover for mental pain and suffering. Parents of an adult child may recover where there are no other survivors under the Act.
Lost support and services
What the person contributed to the household, in money and in work that now has to be paid for or gone without. It is calculated from the date of the injury and forward over the years the person would reasonably have been expected to live, and it is usually the part that requires an economist.
What Florida law requires you to prove
Who brings the claim
The personal representative of the estate brings it, on behalf of the survivors and the estate together, under Fla. Stat. § 768.20. A family cannot file individually. If there is a will it usually names who that should be; if there is not, the court appoints somebody, and the probate step runs alongside the injury claim rather than after it.
The deadline
A wrongful death action in Florida generally has to be filed within two years of the death under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. Claims against a government body carry a separate and much shorter notice requirement, which is why the identity of the defendant is worth settling early rather than late.
How fault is shared
Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81 a recovery is reduced by the share of fault attributed to the person who died, and a finding of more than 50 percent bars it altogether. Families are frequently told at an early stage that their relative caused it. That is an opening position rather than a conclusion, and it is answered with evidence.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide wrongful death page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Palm Beach County
What proves one of these is documentary and physical, and the further west it happened the more it depends on the evidence rather than on a witness.
- The crash or incident report, with the investigating officer’s notes and photographs
- The medical examiner’s report and autopsy findings
- Hospital, air ambulance and ground ambulance records, which in the western county cover a long transport
- The vehicle, vessel or equipment, inspected before repair or release
- Engine and equipment data, which does not depend on anybody having seen the incident
- State inspection and complaint history for a care facility, something we can get independently
- Prior incidents and complaints at the same property or by the same operator
- Employment, tax and pension records for the economic losses
On the western roads there is frequently no camera anywhere, so the vehicle and the roadway are the case. Both are cleared quickly, which is why an inspection request goes out before anybody has decided whether to bring a claim.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in West Palm Beach is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled wrongful death claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile → -
Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
The other side is usually organized before the funeral. That is not cruelty, it is procedure, and it is worth knowing in advance rather than discovering it.
- Fault is moved onto the person who died
- They were speeding, they were not paying attention, they should have known. Every percentage point moves money off the claim and past 50 percent it ends it. The person it is being said about cannot answer, which is exactly why the physical evidence, the data and an independent reconstruction matter more here than in almost any other kind of case.
- The vehicle or the equipment is released and disposed of
- Once it is gone the only version of events is the one written down by somebody else. A preservation request in the first weeks is routine and costs nothing. The same request in the fourth month is an argument about what was destroyed.
- The family is told to wait for the investigation to finish
- A police or agency investigation can run for months and its conclusions are not binding on a civil claim in any event. Waiting for it is how evidence gets lost. The two processes run in parallel, and the civil work does not need permission from the criminal one.
What a claim can include
Lost support and services
The money the person brought in and the work they did that now has to be paid for or gone without, projected over the years they would reasonably have been expected to live.
Loss of companionship, guidance and protection
What a spouse, a child or a parent has lost that is not financial. The statute decides which survivors may claim it.
Mental pain and suffering of the survivors
The grief of the people the statute recognizes, from the date of the injury onward.
What we have recovered
Verified matters this firm has handled on wrongful death claims. Figures are gross recoveries, before attorney fees, costs and medical liens come out of them.
A father and grandfather died in a fall down a makeshift stairwell built when an owner split a townhouse into two units without permits.
Broward County jury verdictEvery verdict and settlement we publish, with the press coverage for the ones that were reported. No result predicts another case: every claim turns on its own facts, its own evidence and the insurance actually available.
Why Wolf & Pravato in West Palm Beach
A Palm Beach County wrongful death claim is filed in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in downtown West Palm Beach, with the estate opened in the probate division there, minutes from this office. The venue shapes what an insurer offers, because carriers keep records of which firms in a county actually take cases to a jury.
Board Certification in Civil Trial law is the Bar’s own measure of trial experience, and 861 of Florida’s 109,000-plus lawyers hold it. Richard Pravato has held it since 2004. It is the credential that changes how an adjuster reads a file, because it says the case has somewhere to go if they will not pay it.
Asking costs nothing and there is no fee unless we win. If we look at what happened and think the claim is not worth pursuing, we will say so on the first call instead of signing you up.
West Palm Beach wrongful death questions
It happened in a nursing home. Is that a wrongful death claim or something else?
It can be both. Florida gives residents a specific set of statutory rights and a claim for violating them sits alongside the wrongful death statute, which is what decides who in the family may recover and for what. The care records belong to the facility, but the state inspection and complaint history does not, and that is frequently where a pattern first becomes visible.
The county was doing roadwork where it happened. Does that change the deadline?
It can change it a great deal. A claim against a state or local government body carries a separate written notice requirement and a much shorter window than an ordinary claim, and missing it can end the claim outright regardless of the merits. Where a public entity may be involved, that is the first thing to settle rather than something to reach later.
We live out of state. Does someone have to be in Florida for this?
Not for most of it. There are requirements about who may serve as personal representative of a Florida estate, and that is worth sorting early, but families administer these from other states routinely. The court appearances that matter are few and generally do not require the whole family to travel.
How long do we have?
Generally two years from the date of death for most wrongful death claims. Cases involving medical negligence and claims against government entities run on their own timetables with their own pre-suit requirements. Because those tracks differ, it is worth asking early rather than assuming the two-year figure covers your situation.
We have not been appointed personal representative yet. Is it too early to call?
No, and that is precisely when the call is most useful. The appointment is a probate step that takes time, and evidence in the underlying case is aging while it happens. We can explain the sequence and begin preserving what matters without anyone committing to anything.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 2101 Vista Parkway, Suite 4500, West Palm Beach, FL 33411.