When a plaintiff files a personal injury lawsuit, the plaintiff\u2019s attorney will usually seek compensation for all possible damages against the defendant. But when the defendant is a government entity, different laws may apply \u2013 and they can limit recoverable damages.<\/p>\n
A prime example came to light on March 12, when a three-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled that the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) could not be held liable for certain non-pecuniary damages in a wrongful death lawsuit over a fatal accident involving a Philadelphia woman. The Commonwealth Court cited the Sovereign Immunity Act as the authority for its ruling, which overturned a previous ruling by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.<\/p>\n
On August 15, 2012, 30-year-old Stephanie Ebersole fell from the SEPTA train platform at the South-Lombard Station in Philadelphia. She was electrocuted and lay on the track for hours before a train struck and killed her. Ebersole\u2019s father and administrator of her estate, Jay Ebersole, filed a lawsuit, seeking damages for himself, Stephanie\u2019s mother and her sister. <\/p>\n
But the three-judge panel ruled that the Sovereign Immunity Act protects SEPTA from the demand for damages stemming from a parent\u2019s loss of consortium in a wrongful death lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Loss of consortium is an example of non-pecuniary damages, which involve those damages that cannot be measured in money. And the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had previously ruled in another case that only specific damages may be recovered under the Sovereign Immunity Act, even in cases in which sovereign immunity has been waived. <\/p>\n
A wrongful death action, like other personal injury lawsuits, are are best filed by law firms that specialize in handling personal injury cases. Litigation against a government entity may face statutory limitations, among other constraints. An experienced personal injury law firm will be able to determine what damages are appropriate to seek in order to gain the maximum possible compensation for their client.<\/p>\n
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Cuando un demandante interpone una demanda por da\u00f1os personales, el abogado del demandante suele reclamar una indemnizaci\u00f3n por todos los da\u00f1os y perjuicios posibles contra el demandado. Sin embargo, cuando el demandado es una entidad p\u00fablica, pueden aplicarse leyes diferentes, que pueden limitar los da\u00f1os y perjuicios indemnizables. Un claro ejemplo de ello sali\u00f3 a la luz el 12 de marzo, cuando un tribunal compuesto por tres jueces de\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[171,169,172,170,21],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-jay-ebersole","tag-pennsylvania-commonwealth-court","tag-septa","tag-sovereign-immunity-act","tag-supreme-court"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}