Can you sue yourself for wrongful-death without admitting manslaughter?

Question

Prompted by a comment in another question, the story of a woman suing herself came to my attention.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/02/19/utah-appeals-court-allows-woman-to-sue-herself-over-fatal-car-crash/

Suit yourself: Utah court lets woman sue herself over fatal wreck

A Utah woman will be the plaintiff and the defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit that has legal experts scratching their heads.

Barbara Bagley was driving her family's Range Rover Dec. 27, 2011 on Interstate 80 near Battle Mountain, Nev., when it slid on sagebrush on Interstate 80, and flipped. Her husband, Bradley Vom Baur, was sent flying from the vehicle, suffered major injuries and died nearly two weeks later in a hospital, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Bagley, 48, suffered a concussion, broken ribs, a shattered wrist and two punctured lungs. One of her dogs, a Shetland sheepdog named Dooley, ran from the scene and wandered the desert for 53 days before being found.

Someone mentioned in the comments to the article the full name of the case:

k_runner Feb 20, 2015

For those who follow particular cases, this one is "Barbara Bagley and the Estate of Bradley M. Vom Baur v. Barbara Bagley" or simply "Bagley v. Bagley."

But more interesting is another comment:

MrTrout Feb 19, 2015 If she is suing herself for negligence which resulted in the death of another, then the state should arrest her and charge her with manslaughter (ie- negligence resulting in the death of another). She is basically admitting she caused the death of her husband through negligence. From a legal perspective, seems pretty straight forward to me.

Indeed, if she sues herself in a civil case for negligence (resulting in death of another), doesn't she automatically have to admit the guilt, and wouldn't / shouldn't she be immediately charged for manslaughter by the state?

Answer 1

The burden for proving claims in civil actions is "preponderance of evidence," i.e., merely that "more than 50% of the evidence favors a conclusion."

However, the standard for conviction of any crime is "beyond a reasonable doubt." I.e., if the defense can raise reasonable doubt about one's guilt then the defendant should be acquitted.

There is quite a bit of space between the two standards, which is compounded by prosecutorial discretion to even bring criminal charges.

Answer 2

First of all, you can't "sue yourself." In this case, the estate of the husband is suing the wife. Apparently the wife is trying to manipulate insurance into paying her for accidentally killing her husband through her own negligence. That is really shameless, assuming she's to benefit.

That said, you can admit to negligence and not expose yourself to criminal charges. Manslaughter requires more than mere negligence. It would need to be gross negligence – such reckless and abhorrent behavior that it would imply malice. Ordinary negligence, which is a plain old accident, does not rise to this level. It's not outcome-specific, but rather an action-specific analysis. So, hypothetically, you could admit negligence and not be admitting to a crime. Though your lawyer would need to ensure you testified carefully!

Notwithstanding the above: The insurance industry is certainly not going to allow itself to be manipulated in this way. No liability or umbrella policy provides coverage against litigation from someone listed (or who should have been listed) on the policy. Even if the policies didn't explicitly exclude such coverage you would not likely prevail: The insurance lobby will fight this all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to, and I think they'd ultimately win, because it's bad policy to allow a policyholder to sue himself anytime there's an accident; if that logic held, you could conceivably sue yourself on your own behalf for your own injuries. This would flood the courts with even more frivolous suits, as what's one have to lose in a judgment against themselves if the insurance could be liable. I'm quite sure that would be untenable; the rates for liability insurance would have to be exponentially larger if that were ever enforceable, even in the absence of exclusionary language (although i've never seen a policy that would allow such a thing, it doesn't mean it couldn't exist in theory).

The legal system is meant to be adversarial. An example like this, in which "the estate" of one's spouse is suing the spouse, but the spouse is the only beneficiary of the estate, is ludicrous and against all tenets of the judicial process. If the judge doesn't reject it I wouldn't expect any jury to want someone to benefit from a death in which they admit negligence. And in court it is very easy to pierce any "veil" that might be constructed to hide the ultimate beneficiary of an award.

Answer 3

When you sue a person in a civil court you claim that they caused you damage and should pay for it. The fact that you sue doesn't mean that your claim is true. It doesn't even mean that you believe it to be true (obviously you shouldn't sue in such a case, and it might create liability, but you can sue for things that you know are false).

So the suing doesn't create any evidence that your claim is true. But then there is the difference between your claim that damage has occurred, and whether there was an actual crime. While some civil cases are about crimes (if I take a hammer to your car, that is criminal, but you don't care about the crime, you want me to pay for the damage), many, many are not.

I'd say it is perfectly possible to sue for some claim, win the case, and then in criminal court completely deny that claim. Not a nice thing to do, but possible.

Answer 4

Reading only slightly deeper into the given example in Utah, of the woman "suing herself," as it typical the media got it essentially wrong. From a legal standpoint, the decedent husband's estate is suing her, not herself...though she is in this case the Administrator of her husband's estate. And, as would naturally follow from that, there is a third-party-payor, an insurance policy.

Another scenario where this kind of thing plays out is when a family-owned business sues the family (or vice versa). Generally speaking, a court does not allow a co-respondent where that person is also a petitioner, because they recognize that such a person will by definition be hostile to their own defense, and usually to the detriment of the other co-respondents.

I was involved in just such a NH superior court case: A couple is in divorce procedings. Parents of spouse A sue the couple for repayment of an alleged 2nd mortgage. (leaving aside the question of validity or lack thereof of the mortgage itself) The mortgage is held by a trust for which the parents of "A" are trustees, and spouse "A" is a beneficiary. Therefore, through the intermediary of the trust, spouse A is suing herself and spouse B, to the detriment of spouse B.

Ultimately the petitioners' case foundered on the question of the validity of the mortgage, which was found to have been discharged years before: Additionally, spouse A was denied as a co-respondent; allowing her as such would in that case have meant that she could unilaterally admit the mortgage debt as valid, where it would then become part of the divorce marital inventory...a sly gambit that was denied. If the case had been allowed to move forward, spouse A would have been enriched at the expense of spouse B no matter win or lose.

But further to the OP's question: There's quite a bit of daylight between being negligent and being guilty of manslaughter. As was well-put by Feetwet, the tort process and the criminal process are quite different things.