Wrongful Death and Survival Actions Donora

The difference between the two claims matters because they pay different people. The wrongful death action compensates the surviving family, a spouse in West Columbia, adult children on Sixth Street Hill, for losses like funeral costs, lost financial support and the loss of the person's companionship and guidance. The survival action belongs to the deceased's estate and recovers what the worker himself lost: his own medical bills, his lost earnings, and the pain he endured from diagnosis to death.

One lawsuit holds both. Pennsylvania's wrongful death statute is found at 42 Pa.C.S. Chapter 83, and the two-year filing deadline sits in the state's Pennsylvania Code at 42 Pa.C.S.

§ 5524.

Which action carries the most money depends on the worker's history. If a Donora Zinc Works or American Steel & Wire man worked 30 or 40 years and lived months after his diagnosis, the survival action's lost-earnings and pain components are often the larger piece. If he was retired on a fixed income, the wrongful death losses to the family may lead.

A Mon Valley case is reconstructed from the plant and the era, the zinc works along the Monongahela River waterfront, the mills reached from the Thompson Avenue corridor, the asbestos insulation, gaskets and furnace brick those jobs touched. Asbestos is a recognized cause of mesothelioma, a disease the federal workplace-safety rules on asbestos have regulated for decades. Medical records tie the diagnosis to that exposure, and the clinical course of mesothelioma supports the survival-action damages.

Step 1, the death certificate and medical records are gathered to confirm the cause.

Step 2, the estate is opened in Washington County so an administrator can bring the survival action. Step 3, the work history is reconstructed, union cards, Social Security earnings printouts, pension records and coworker memory from First Ward and Meldon Avenue households. Step 4, the responsible manufacturers and their asbestos bankruptcy trusts are identified.

Step 5, both claims are filed inside the two-year window and pressed toward settlement or trial. Many asbestos makers funded court-supervised bankruptcy trusts, and a separate trust claim can often follow the lawsuit.

A common worry in Donora is that too much time has passed, that a death 30 or 50 years after exposure is too old to trace. It is not.

The deadline runs from the date of death, not the date of exposure, so a man exposed in the 1960s who died this year is well inside the window. The estate, not the sick person, brings the survival action, so nothing is lost if the worker was too ill to act before passing. Records from the Donora Historical Society, the Donora Public Library and old employment files frequently fill the gaps families cannot fill from memory alone.

We carry that reconstruction for you.