Episode 06: Wrongful Death - A Child’s Story
Tort law operates on the premise that a tort is a wrong, and that a remedy is needed to repair the wrong (or the damage that results from it). Remedies almost always involve someone paying for the damage that has been done. This is what lawyers refer to as the ‘corrective’ and ‘distributive’ functions of the law.
For most of us, this seems simple enough. But what happens when the wrong is the loss of a life, and the life is a child’s — or a young person’s?
In this episode of Misjudged, we look at the often curious outcomes in wrongful death cases involving children, with particular focus on a few seminal cases that illustrate the stunning disparities and perverse outcomes in our wrongful death system.
In a system that measures life primarily on the basis of the income that a dead person would have generated for their dependents, the death of an unwed young person with no dependents can literally be treated as worthless. We consider life to be priceless, yet we treat it as valueless. What you learn may surprise you.
