Sarasota Wrongful Death Lawyer

If you are reading this within days of losing someone, you do not need a sales pitch. You need to know what has to happen and what can wait.

Almost nothing has to happen this week. There is no deadline that expires in the first days, and the decisions that matter are better made once the funeral is behind you. What follows is here so that when you are ready, the process is not also a mystery.

My name is David Harris. I have handled these claims in Sarasota County since 2003, and they are the ones I take fewest of at a time.

This is the structural point that surprises almost everyone, and it explains much of what follows.

Under Florida's Act, sections 768.16 to 768.26, the action is brought by the personal representative of the deceased person's estate. Not by the widow, not by the children, not jointly by the family. One person brings it, on behalf of everyone entitled to recover.

So a probate step usually comes first: someone has to be appointed. If there is a will naming a personal representative, that is generally who serves. If there is not, Florida law sets an order. It is administrative rather than adversarial, and it is the reason a claim often appears to sit still for its first weeks.

Section 768.21 sets out who the survivors are and what each may claim. In broad terms:

The categories are narrower than most families expect, and the boundaries turn on facts like age and dependency rather than on closeness. Explaining that honestly early is better than discovering it late.

The underlying case is a case, and it faces the same defences as any other. Modified comparative under section 768.81 has applied since 2023, so a share of assigned to the person who died reduces what the survivors recover, and more than half eliminates it.

The evidence has the same shelf life it always does, and it decays while the family is grieving:

Preserving those is work that can be done without involving the family in anything difficult.

The fatal crashes in this county are not evenly spread. They concentrate on the fast roads: Interstate 75 and its interchanges, Clark Road, the long signal-free stretches of the Tamiami Trail south of the city, and the US 301 corridor. Motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists are heavily over-represented, because there is nothing between them and the impact.

A crash on the interstate or a state road is investigated by the Florida Highway Patrol; elsewhere in the unincorporated county it is the Sheriff's Office. Fatal crashes draw a traffic homicide investigator, whose report is more detailed than an ordinary one and takes considerably longer to produce.

Quietly, and with as little demand on the family as the case allows. I would rather gather what I can from the agencies and the scene than ask a grieving household to relive the day for my benefit. When something does require a decision from you, I will explain the options and what each one costs.

There is no fee unless there is a recovery, and there is no charge for the conversation that decides whether to go further.