In California, a spouse or child can often file directly. In Oregon, the insurance company will tell you "only the estate can sue" and hope everyone stops asking questions.

What's actually true is harsher and broader: in Oregon, the lawsuit is usually filed by the personal representative of the estate under ORS 30.020, but the claim is for the benefit of family members, not just some abstract estate account. If nobody has been appointed yet, that usually starts in Jackson County Circuit Court probate for a Medford death.

Yes, funeral and burial costs can be recovered.

So can other damages, including:

• medical bills tied to the fatal injury
• lost financial support the deceased would have provided
• loss of household services
• loss of society and companionship for eligible family members

In Oregon, people often say "loss of consortium," but in a wrongful death case the real claim is usually folded into loss of society, companionship, and services.

There's another piece insurers conveniently blur: Oregon wrongful death law also allows recovery for what the deceased went through before death - pain and suffering, disability, and lost income between injury and death. If your employee survived the crash for hours, days, or weeks after a black-ice wreck on I-5, that window can add real value. That is the Oregon version of what many people call a survival-type claim.

The filing deadline is usually 3 years from the injury that caused the death. Don't confuse that with how long the insurance company keeps talking to you.

If the death happened while working, workers' comp death benefits may apply, but that does not erase a third-party wrongful death claim against the at-fault driver or company - like a Walmart delivery van, a contractor truck, or another business vehicle in a winter crash near Medford. Oregon also does not impose a general voter-approved cap on these noneconomic damages the way some insurers wish it did.