Wrongful Death Lawsuits: Mental Anguish Damages Explained

Undefeated Houston Wrongful Death Lawyers

No one can put a dollar figure on grief. But when someone dies because of another person’s negligence, wrongful death law attempts to account for that suffering: to financially quantify the sleepless nights, the disrupted routines, and the sheer weight such an unimaginable loss inflicts on a deceased victim’s closest loved ones.

While statutes vary, most states, including Texas, allow survivors to seek damages for “mental anguish,” as part of a wrongful death lawsuit. How courts calculate something so intangible, and how plaintiffs prove the extent of that loss, largely depends on the jurisdiction where a claim is filed and the plaintiff’s specific relationship to the deceased.

Having won billions and successfully represented clients in connection with fatal truck and 18-wheeler accidents, oilfield accidents, maritime and offshore accidents, and plant, pipeline and refinery explosions, our Houston wrongful death lawyers understand that losing a loved one to another’s negligence extracts far more than a financial toll. If you and your family are struggling in the wake of a wrongful death, we’re ready to leverage all of our knowledge and resources to help you recover the maximum damages—both economic and non-economic—available to you and your family under the law.

Why Wrongful Death Laws Recognize Mental Anguish

For decades, state wrongful death laws recognized only economic damages—lost income and earning capacity, lost benefits, funeral expenses—as compensable. There were two rationales for this stance: Courts were concerned that, without objective evidence, survivors could exaggerate the closeness of their relationship with the deceased, as well as their grief. Meanwhile, juries would have no reliable way of translating that suffering into a dollar amount.

However, because that framework shortchanged grieving families who lost a child, stay-at-home spouse, or another non- or low-earning loved one to another’s negligence, thinking slowly started to change. In 1983, for example, the Texas Supreme Court opened the door to mental anguish and other non-economic damages, ruling that a parent’s losses after the wrongful death of a child weren’t limited to financial losses alone. A few years later, the court went even further, explicitly ruling that families could recover these emotional damages without demonstrating any physical consequences of their grief.

Today, nearly every state—49 except New York—allows survivors to recover compensation for non-economic losses like mental anguish, loss of companionship, or emotional suffering in wrongful death claims. About half also don’t cap the amount of money that can be awarded for those damages.

In Texas, specifically, damages for mental anguish are intended to compensate wrongful death plaintiffs for the “harrowing experience resulting from the death of a loved one.” It’s a separate claim for loss of companionship, which addresses the actual loss of the relationship. As a result, most families filing wrongful death lawsuits claim damages for both. Although Texas’s wrongful death statute doesn’t impose a cap on such damages in most claims, mental anguish compensation is subject to a statutory cap when a wrongful death is the result of medical malpractice.

How is Mental Anguish Proven in Wrongful Death Cases in Texas?

While every state has established its own burden of proof for proving mental anguish in wrongful death lawsuits, you generally have to demonstrate that the grief resulting from your loss goes beyond what would normally be expected. In Texas, that means proving that your loved one’s death caused both:

A substantial disruption in daily life
A high degree of mental pain and distress beyond ordinary sorrow

To meet this high standard, our experienced wrongful death attorneys typically rely on a range of evidence that might include:

Medical and Mental Health Records: Psychiatric diagnosis, therapy logs, records showing new prescriptions for or increased doses of anti-anxiety, antidepressant, or sleep medications in the immediate aftermath of the death.
Employment and Academic Records: Records showing increased absenteeism, diminished job performance, or falling grades in the aftermath of a wrongful death.
Financial and Household Records: Evidence showing a plaintiff has stopped paying household bills or has neglected routine upkeep since their loved one died.
Witness Testimony: Statements from family, friends, and coworkers who can attest to changes in your personality, habits or lifestyle since your loss.
Expert Witness Testimony: Your treating psychiatrist or other professionals who can testify on any specific diagnosis and the duration and progression of your suffering, as well as life-care planners who can demonstrate the costs of your future mental health care.
Written and Digital Evidence: Your personal journal, as well as emails, text messages, and voicemails to friends and family that demonstrate the extent of your suffering.

How Do You Place a Value on Mental Anguish?

Most states allow juries discretion when determining how much to award for mental anguish. However, during settlement negotiations before a case goes to trial, the parties often rely on one of two informal calculation methods:

The Multiplier Method: This calculation takes the total economic damages from the wrongful death lawsuit and multiplies them by a set number (usually 1x to 5x) to determine a fair compensation for mental anguish.
The Per-Diem Method: This approach assigns a specific dollar value to each day of the survivors’ grief. That daily rate is multiplied by the total number of days the survivors are projected to suffer, using standard life expectancy charts.

While Texas allows either method to be used during negotiations, plaintiffs whose wrongful death lawsuits go to trial must provide clear evidence and a logical reason for the exact amount sought for mental anguish. To meet this strict standard, our team works with medical experts qualified to testify to the extent of a plaintiff’s trauma and the type and duration of care they’ll need to address it, as well as economists who can speak to the likely cost of that care.

Preserving Your Rights to Mental Anguish Damages

In our experience, insurance companies see a family’s trauma as “low-hanging fruit” they can downplay to limit their final payout. Even in states that don’t follow standards as strict as Texas, it’s important to take steps to document your mental anguish in order to counter their tactics.

So what can you do to ensure you and your family receive the maximum compensation possible?

Establish a Medical Record: Don’t assume your depression and anxiety will merely “go away.” Seek treatment from a licensed professional counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist in the immediate aftermath of your loved one’s death. Doing so is important for your own mental health, and it will create a clinical record of your diagnosis and the toll the loss has taken on you emotionally.
Collect Documentation: Keep job performance reviews, report cards or college grade records, a daily journal of your feelings and emotions, emails and text messages to friends and family, and anything else that demonstrates the changes in your personality, your emotional state, and the disruption in daily life you’ve experienced since your loved one’s passing.
Identify Witnesses: Keep a list of anyone—other than your close family–who has observed the changes in your personality, emotional turmoil, and disruptions in your habits or social life since your loved one’s death. This could include friends, neighbors, co-workers, and religious leaders.
Stay Off Social Media: The insurance company and its attorneys will monitor your accounts for anything they could use to downplay your suffering. Even a single photo of you smiling or a statement expressing slight optimism could be used to undermine your credibility.
Contact Our Experienced Wrongful Death Attorneys: The sooner you contact an experienced wrongful death lawyer, the better positioned you’ll be to recover all the damages you and your family are entitled to. Our undefeated attorneys understand the nuances of wrongful death law, and we know what it takes to prevail against deep-pocketed insurance companies and their high-powered legal teams. We also have the resources needed to gather the evidence and retain the right medical and economic experts central to a compelling case for mental anguish.

FAQ: Mental Anguish in Wrongful Death

Do I need a therapist or psychiatric diagnosis to recover mental anguish damages?

No. Even under Texas’s strict legal standard, which requires that you show actual evidence of the nature, duration, and severity of your anguish and demonstrate a genuine disruption to your daily life, you don’t need to provide expert testimony. Your own testimony, witness testimony, medical records, and other documentation can be enough to meet that standard. However, any expert testimony you can provide will certainly strengthen your claims.

Can more than one family member recover mental anguish damages?

Yes. A decedent’s spouse, children, and parents can each separately recover damages for mental anguish, even if they’re named plaintiffs in the same wrongful death lawsuit. However, while there are some limited exceptions, most states bar other relatives—siblings, step-parents (unless there was a legal adoption), grandparents, unmarried partners (unless common law spouses), and extended family—from seeking damages from wrongful death.

What’s the deadline to file a wrongful death claim?

Every state sets a statute of limitations for civil claims, and wrongful death is no exception. In Texas, that deadline is generally two years from the date of death, rather than the date the decedent was hurt. If you miss that deadline, you won’t be permitted to file in most cases, no matter how strong your claims for wrongful death might be.

Does receiving life insurance or other benefits reduce what my family can recover for wrongful death?

It depends on the state where you’re filing and the type of benefit, but private life insurance will not reduce your recovery. About half of the states have modified the “collateral source rule” to allow courts to reduce a verdict if health insurance or workers’ compensation already paid for medical bills or lost wages. However, no state uses private life insurance to lower a wrongful death payout. Texas is among the states that still strictly follow the traditional rule, and its courts have found that life insurance proceeds, disability payments, and similar benefits should not factor into, or be used to reduce, any compensation awarded to a wrongful death plaintiff.

Can I sue for the losses incurred before death?

Survivors can’t sue for these losses. However, most states, including Texas, allow a decedent’s estate to pursue a survival claim to recover compensation for medical bills, lost wages, conscious pain and suffering and other damages they incurred between the time of their injury and the time of death.

How does it impact my wrongful death claim if the party responsible is facing criminal charges?

It has no direct impact. Wrongful death is a civil action and has a completely different—and lower—standard of proof than a criminal case. Even if the responsible party isn’t facing or is acquitted of criminal charges related to your loved one’s passing, your wrongful death claim can move forward. However, criminal charges and particularly a conviction can greatly strengthen your civil claim.

Contact Our Undefeated Wrongful Death Lawyers at 1-888-603-3636 for a Free Consultation

In addition to winning billions, our Undefeated Texas Wrongful Death Attorneys consistently recover record-setting verdicts and settlements for clients in Texas and across the United States:

If you lost a loved one to another’s negligence, you deserve the maximum compensation for ALL of your injuries and losses, including your resulting mental anguish. Call 1-888-603-3636 or send us a confidential email through our website to schedule a free consultation.

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