§ GUIDE · FATAL CLAIMS

What a fatal claim covers,
and how it is calculated.

No sum replaces a person. What a fatal claim can do is replace the support they gave, cover what their death has cost, and compensate what they went through. These judgments show the arithmetic, and two traps that catch families out.

Bereavement award

£15,120

Shah past dependency

£95,309

Shah future dependency

£159,751

Time limit

3 yrs from death

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§ THE FOUR PARTS

Two Acts, four heads of loss.

Bereavement award

A fixed statutory sum under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976, currently £15,120 for deaths in England and Wales on or after 1 May 2020. It goes to a spouse or civil partner, a cohabiting partner of two years or more, or the parents of an unmarried child under 18.

Dependency

The support the person gave that is now gone: income, pension and the practical things they did. For a family that relied on them this is usually the largest part of the claim by a wide margin.

Funeral expenses

Reasonable funeral costs and related expenses, repaid to whoever met them.

The estate's claim

Under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934, compensation for the pain, suffering and losses between the negligence and the death, paid to the estate.

§ A WORKED EXAMPLE

The judgment that shows the arithmetic.

Shah v North West London Hospital NHS Trust [2013] EWHC 4088 (QB) concerned a 37-year-old mother who collapsed with leg weakness two weeks after childbirth and died from a ruptured common iliac artery. Her widower and four children brought the claim. It was dismissed, because the court found the A&E doctor's failure to check leg pulses was not negligent and would not have changed the outcome.

The judge nonetheless set out what he would have awarded, which is why the case is so useful: general damages of £1,000, funeral expenses of £7,000, a bereavement award of £12,027 at the rate then applying, and £22,750 for loss of intangible benefits, together with past dependency losses of £95,309 and future dependency loss of £159,751.

The shape is what matters. The fixed award is small. The dependency, built from the deceased's earnings and the services she provided to her family, is the bulk of it.

§ WHY AMOUNTS VARY SO MUCH

The law compensates loss, not the value of a life.

Because dependency depends entirely on who relied on the person who died, two identical failures can produce very different claims. The death of a retired person with no dependants may be worth little beyond the bereavement award and funeral costs. The death of a working parent of young children can be worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds, because the family has lost income, pension and years of childcare and household work.

Families often find that hard, and it is worth understanding before a claim begins.

§ THE SETTLEMENT TRAP

A claim settled in a person's lifetime can extinguish the family's claim.

Ritchie v The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust [2026] EWCC 50 is a hard case. A man contracted Mycobacterium chimaera endocarditis from a contaminated heater-cooler unit during 2015 heart valve surgery and died in October 2022. Before his death he had settled his own claim against the device manufacturer for £250,000 damages plus £20,000 costs.

His widow then brought a Fatal Accidents Act claim against the hospital, with a schedule totalling £35,214.95. The court gave summary judgment for the trust: because the deceased had obtained full satisfaction for the tort within his lifetime, he could not have maintained an action at the moment of death, so no dependency claim survived for his family.

A dependant's claim only exists if the deceased could still have sued when they died. Where death is foreseeable, the terms of any settlement need very careful thought.

§ CAUSATION STILL DECIDES CASES

Proving the death was avoidable is the hardest part.

Runciman v University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust [2024] EWHC 1800 (KB) shows how fatal claims fail. A widower alleged that his wife's rare cerebral venous sinus thrombosis was misdiagnosed as a stroke and treated with thrombolysis. The claim, brought under both Acts and valued at £284,643, was dismissed: there was no breach of duty by the treating clinicians, and even correct treatment would probably not have saved her.

Where causation is proved, families do succeed. In Davies v Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust [2021] EWHC 169 (QB) the trust admitted that intravenous antibiotics should have been given hours earlier, and the judge found that with timely treatment Mrs Davies would probably have survived. Quantum had already been agreed.

§ THE JUDGMENTS BEHIND THIS GUIDE

Five fatal claim judgments.

A worked dependency calculation, the settlement trap, the secondary victim ruling, a claim that failed on causation and one that succeeded.

Claim failed

Shah v North West London Hospital NHS Trust

[2013] EWHC 4088 (QB)·2013·Liability and damages decided at trial

A widower and four children claimed after Mrs Shah, who had collapsed with leg weakness days after giving birth, died from an undetected arterial tear. The court found the A&E doctor's failure to check leg pulses was not negligent and would not have changed the outcome, so the claim failed.

Fatal claims need proof both that care fell below a reasonable standard and that better care would probably have saved the patient. The judgment nonetheless shows how dependency damages for a spouse and children are built up from the deceased's earnings and services.

Claim failed

Ritchie v The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust

[2026] EWCC 50·2026·Liability decided at trial

A widow brought a dependency and bereavement claim against the hospital after her husband died from an infection picked up during heart surgery. Because he had already settled his own claim in full against the equipment manufacturer while alive, the court held no Fatal Accidents Act claim survived for his dependants.

A dependant's claim under the Fatal Accidents Act only exists if the deceased could still have sued at the moment of death. Settling a claim in the patient's lifetime can extinguish the family's later dependency claim, so settlement terms need careful thought where death is foreseeable.

Claim failed

Paul and another v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust; Polmear and another v Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust; Purchase v Ahmed

[2024] UKSC 1·2024·Appeal decision

Three families sought damages for psychiatric injury after watching a relative die from a condition that doctors had negligently failed to diagnose. The Supreme Court (Lord Burrows dissenting) held that doctors do not owe relatives a duty to protect them from the shock of witnessing a patient's death or medical crisis.

Relatives who develop a psychiatric illness from witnessing a loved one's death caused by medical negligence generally cannot claim as secondary victims. Their remedies are limited to the Fatal Accidents Act dependency and bereavement claims.

Claim failed

Runciman v University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust

[2024] EWHC 1800 (KB)·2024·Liability decided at trial

A widower claimed that doctors at Southampton General misdiagnosed his wife's rare cerebral venous thrombosis as a stroke, gave her clot-busting drugs and delayed the correct treatment, leading to her death. The judge found the clinicians acted reasonably on the presentation and that even earlier correct treatment would probably not have saved her.

A tragic outcome after a rare condition is missed does not by itself prove negligence; the question is whether a reasonable body of doctors would have acted the same way on the information available. Causation must be proved separately.

Claimant succeeded

Davies v Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust

[2021] EWHC 169 (QB)·2021·Liability decided at trial

Mrs Davies was admitted to Wexham Park Hospital with pneumococcal meningitis; the trust admitted intravenous antibiotics should have started by 10.40 but were not given until 13.20, and she died two days later. After a causation trial the judge found she would probably have survived with timely antibiotics.

In sepsis and meningitis claims a delay of even a few hours in giving IV antibiotics can be negligent, and the key dispute is often whether the delay changed the outcome. Here the family succeeded, with damages already agreed.

Browse the whole case library →

Contains information licensed under the Open Justice - Licence v2.0. Judgments from Find Case Law, The National Archives. Summaries are ours; amounts only where printed in the judgment.

§ QUESTIONS

Common questions

How is dependency calculated?

From the person's net income, how much of it went to the family, and how many years it would have continued, with a separate value for the services they provided such as childcare and household work. Shah v North West London Hospital shows past dependency of £95,309 and future dependency of £159,751 for a mother of four.

Who can bring a fatal claim?

The personal representatives of the estate, on behalf of the estate and the dependants. Dependants include a spouse or civil partner, a cohabiting partner of at least two years, children, parents and certain other relatives who depended on the person financially.

Do we have to wait for the inquest?

No. An inquest establishes who died and how, but does not decide blame or award compensation. The civil claim runs separately, and evidence from the inquest can be useful.

My relative settled a claim before they died. Can we still claim?

Possibly not. In Ritchie v The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust the deceased had settled in full during his lifetime, so no Fatal Accidents Act claim survived for his widow. Take advice before settling where death is foreseeable.

How long do we have?

Usually three years from the date of death, or from when the person bringing the claim first knew the death might have been caused by negligent care. If the deceased was already out of time for their own claim, that can bar the family's claim too.

Can we claim for our own distress?

Generally not as secondary victims, following Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust [2024] UKSC 1. The bereavement award is the fixed sum the law provides.

§ MORE GUIDES

Plain answers to the other questions people ask.

Family psychiatric injury →

Why relatives who witness a death caused by negligence usually cannot claim as secondary victims after the 2024 Supreme Court decision, and what families can claim.

Payout examples →

UK medical negligence payout examples by claim type, typical compensation ranges, and what decides the amount. Then check your own claim free.

Fatal negligence payouts →

What compensation after a death caused by medical negligence can include: the bereavement award, dependency, funeral costs and the estate's claim.

Time limits →

The 3-year time limit for medical negligence claims, the date-of-knowledge rule, and the exceptions for children, mental capacity and fatal claims.

How long claims take →

How long medical negligence claims really take, stage by stage, using official NHS Resolution timing data — and what slows a claim down.

NHS payout data →

Official NHS Resolution figures, band by band, for 2024/25.

This guide is general information about the law in England and Wales, not legal advice about your case. ClaimGavel is run by Costart Projects Ltd on behalf of Tomlin & Partners, a specialist medical negligence firm regulated by the SRA. The free assessment on this page is an AI overview to show you roughly where you stand; a solicitor confirms the position in a free, no-obligation conversation.