Wrongful Death is a claim against a person who can be held liable for a death. The claim fills a hole in the common law. In most, if not all states in the United States, there was no common law right to recover civil damages for the wrongful death of a person. Specifically, a dead person cannot bring a suit for his injuries and that meant that he couldn’t sue for his injuries. A living person’s injuries could receive civil sanction, but activities that resulted in a person's death would not. However, now the states have each enacted statutes to create a right to such recovery. Wrongful death lawsuits allow close relatives to sue for the injuries leading to death of their loved one.

Unlike most criminal law cases, private parties bring a wrongful death suit. In principle, the defendant can refuse to testify on the grounds of self-incrimination but if a defendant invokes this right, the defendant has presented no case and the plaintiff automatically wins the case.

The standard of proof is typically preponderance of the evidence as opposed to clear and convincing or beyond a reasonable doubt. For all the above reasons, it is often easier for a family to seek retribution against someone for wrongful death in tort than a proper criminal law conviction. It should be noted, however, that the two actions are not mutually exclusive; a person may be prosecuted criminally for causing a person's death (whether in the form of murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, or some other theory) and that person can also be sued civilly in a wrongful death action (as in the O.J. Simpson cases).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_death