District of Columbia Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
Estimate a wrongful death settlement under District of Columbia law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What District of Columbia law does to your claim
Four things in state law shape a wrongful death claim: how long you have to file, who the state's wrongful death statute says brings the action, the state's comparative fault rule, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
DC applies contributory negligence. Any plaintiff fault bars recovery.
District of Columbia common law; Wingfield v. People's Drug Store, Inc., 379 A.2d 685 (D.C. 1977)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
The personal representative brings the action. Damages are assessed by the injury to the spouse or domestic partner and the next of kin, and include the reasonable expenses of the last illness and burial. D.C. Code §§ 16-2702, 16-2701(b) reads: “An action pursuant to this chapter shall be brought by and in the name of the personal representative of the deceased person, and within 2 years after the death of the person injured.” and “The damages shall be assessed with reference to the injury resulting from the act, neglect, or default causing the death, to the spouse or domestic partner and the next of kin of the deceased person; and shall include the reasonable expenses of last illness and burial.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of District of Columbia wrongful death law, and how courts have applied it or divided a recovery is not stated here.
D.C. Code §§ 16-2702, 16-2701(b)·Last reviewed 2026-10-16
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
What partial fault costs you in District of Columbia
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under District of Columbia law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every District of Columbia deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the District of Columbia periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
D.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorD.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorD.C. Code § 16-2702·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorD.C. Code § 32-1532·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorD.C. Code § 12-301(8)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorDistrict of Columbia against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 6 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the contributory negligence rule, and District of Columbia is one of them.
- Its 2 years to file is the same as the most common deadline in the country, which 32 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 3 years.
- We have read the official text of 37 jurisdictions' wrongful death statutes. In 20 the personal representative brings the action, in 7 family members or the personal representative may, and the other 10 name a family member, a trustee or a representative, or name who benefits rather than who sues. District of Columbia's is one of the 20 where the personal representative brings it.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages in our data and District of Columbia is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology
District of Columbia calculators
District of Columbia Wrongful Death questions
Every document behind our state injury law figures, each linked with the date we last read it, is listed on our State Injury Law research sources page.